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Google Search Stars

As a fan of stars in general, I note with some interest Google’s application of stars in the main search product. This is a pretty big deal. While Google often experiments with stuff on search results pages, a feature doesn’t get promoted unless it makes a positive difference for a lot of users. I bet Google gets a bunch of good user data out of this feature.

Interestingly Google likes stars for the same reasons I do. They’re an extremely lightweight UI mechanism in terms of cognitive load. Stars don’t take up a lot of screen real estate and they’re not hard to operate. Plus, they can easily be ignored by less sophisticated users.

I wish more personalizable information aggregation applications featured stars.

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