In my defense, I couldn't know about the "View customizations" link because I do have web history turned off, so apparently I never saw any personalized search results. After reading the DuckDuckGo page I expected that everyone's search results get personalized, especially if I am logged in with a Gmail account.
It's obviously not your fault that I didn't know about that, but, on the other hand, you can never expect from a user to know the contents of any help page. Clicking on "help" links is not what most users do. (imagine smiley face here, I don't dare to do that on Hacker News)
Additionally, I think that the "View customizations" link is a bit misleading, because usually customizations (in terms of software) are not automatic. At least I would expect that customizations are something that I do.
Also, the link seems to be placed at the bottom of the page, which means that 99% of the users are probably blind for it. (I can't verify where it is actually placed, because I don't see it.)
After all, I am thankful for the great search results that Google offers. Thank you for your hard work.
But there's another guiding principle that things on the search results page need to "earn" their pixels. Since personalization is a second-order effect and very very few people ever cared enough to click the link and get more info, eventually that link made its way to the bottom of the search results.
But the real solution is to use a search engine that does not track you. Even better is to use it in such a way that it can't track you (ie. through a Tor proxy, while taking other reasonable precautions).
Over time, we saw that people didn't seem to notice/care about the message and corresponding link much, so it eventually migrated down to the bottom of the search results.
Instead, you could have tried to make it more prominent by (for instance) moving it to the upper left rather than the upper right of the search results, right above/below the ads.
Another issue that might be interesting to explore is to what extent users really understand what search customization is, and whether they'd care more or less about it being done automatically once they understood it better.
I have a feeling the vast majority of them probably wouldn't care, and take the attitude of "do whatever it takes to make the results you return more relevant, and I don't really care how."
Google also filters special terms like bittorrent in instant search. This is part of that bubble and people don't even realize it. Thats the point, that most people won't notice, not that the views are not there.
Its like experts-exchange.com putting content below the long footer of the page, yea they can claim its there but many won't notice.
Sorry, this is just not the case: we do provide indication on Google's search results page for personalized results. Here's a couple links that talk about how we surface whether results have been personalized: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer... is our support page and http://searchengineland.com/google-now-notifies-of-search-cu... is an article on Search Engine Land from 2008 when we started surfacing information on how results were personalized.
Here's a simple demo. Do a search in Chrome incognito mode and go to the bottom of the page. You won't see a link that says "View customizations." Now do a search in regular Chrome and check for that link. When I did a search for [matt cutts] in regular Chrome, I saw the "View customizations" link, clicking the link gives this message:
"Search customization details: matt cutts
When possible, Google will customize your search results based on location and/or recent search activity. Additionally, when you're signed in to your Google Account, you may see even more relevant, useful results based on your web history. The following information was used to improve your search results for matt cutts:
Web HistoryOne or more items in your Web History were used to improve search results. Manage Web History Remove Web History from my Google Account If you're curious, you can see what a search for matt cutts looks like without these improvements. The 'More details' link on your search results page can be used to display this page for approximately 30 minutes, after which it will no longer show this page."
In other words, not only can you tell whether a search results page was personalized, you can click a link right on the search results to see exactly what criteria were used to personalize the results. And that page has a clear link to run the search again without personalization.
As I mentioned before, personalization is typically a minor effect in Google's search results and it's almost always an improvement. But for people who are worried about potential "over-personalization," we do provide easy ways to see when a search was personalized, why it was personalized, and do the search again without personalization.