Google Experimenting with Digg-like Voting of Sites on Results Page

Google Experimental, a new division of Google Labs, is currently testing the idea of letting the user delete and add sites listed in his/her personalized search results using Digg-style features. If you choose to participate in this experiment, extra functionally will be added to your personalized search results page. If you like a site listing, you can bump its rank to the top by hitting an up arrow button. If you dislike a site, or it does not seem relevant to your query, you can delete it from your personalized results. During this experiment, which Google says will only last a few weeks, the actions you take are permanent within your own personalized search. How do you know if you are using personalized search? Look on Google's homepage to see if you are logged in. If you are logged in, your Gmail or Google Account will be displayed. The most interesting feature of the experiment is the ability to add a site to the SERP if the user chooses. The site is then added in real time to the results page in which you choose. Some of this activity may alert Google's search quality teams of some issues and possibly result in lasting effects based on how often a site is buried or deleted from personal search. Let's hope that Google has taken into account that one should have to visit the site before deeming its worthiness, otherwise the users would not be able to judge the quality. Although this is only an experiment using a small sample group, this is definitely a foreshadowing of the "future of search." This scares and excites me. SEO really could be dying, but making remarkable sites with the user in mind will never go out of style. In the end, the user will vote with his/her behavior and Google will be counting those votes.