The Gong Show

I know it’s not a *new* feature, but I was unaware that Google allowed its users to export their search history through authenticated RSS. That’s big. I suspect we will start seeing third-party search analytics companies cropping up that will suck in your search history in exchange for personalization, recommendations, and filtering in niches.

For example, if Last.fm sucked in my search history they could see what bands I have been searching on. This is another band engagement metric (beyond just listening) that would allow Last.fm to provide me with more targeted, accurate music recommendations.

Or another example, Google Zeitgeist and Trends is interesting, but it’s only a the tinniest little piece of all the interest information that Google knows. A third party provider could intervene and free up this aggregate search data. I can envision a third party service that requires people to contribute their own search history to a service in exchange for access and analysis of the aggregate of everyone’s search data.

I wonder how long this feature has been around and why more web services are not leveraging it?