I just did a quick search on Google and noticed that i got those Digg like Google (Diggoogle?) results. I think its officially called Google SearchWiki, and if you didn’t know it basically just lets you promote a site up the rankings (by use of the arrow), send a site to the bottom of the rankings (by use of the X), and also make a comment about the site all within the Google SERPS.
At the bottom of the results page you also get the option to add a result, see all your notes, and see all notes that have been made about that particular search result.

Off to the top we go :o)
This has been in labs forever so its not new, i think may have even had it rolled out on .com for a bit? According to a post i later read over at Search engine land, it was realised to .com at the same time as .co.uk. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because this is the first time i have been logged into Google (it never shows if you are not logged in) or haven’t changed any of my settings, and it has shown up.
I think it’s pretty obvious that we won’t see our voting patterns being able to effect the natural SERPs for a while, but you KNOW that Google is mining and ploughing through all that data to continue to tailor results in the future. I haven’t looked too hard but i can’t immediately see how to turn it off either.
It’s probably worth noting that it doesn’t appear on the G Labs experimental search page, which i am sure is where it used to live, and you can check out more info on the Google Search Blog.
Finally, take a look at the video explaining it all…
From what I understand the only ranking effects are within your personalized results so if you rank a site up then it will float higher in your personal results but not anyone elses. Yoast has a great plug-in for FF that ads a unpersonalized, un-search-wiki’d version of Google for you: http://yoast.com/seo-tools/disable-personalized-search-plugin/
Hi Doug,
Yes that’s exactly correct, only you will see the ranking changes based on what you have promoted/demoted. My point in the post was really to say that even though Google aren’t using our data yet, you can bet your bollocks to a barn dance that they are looking over it and seeing how it can be used to affect SERPS in the future.