Could Your Facial Reaction Affect Rankings?

A recently published Google patent suggests that it may at some point begin using biometric indicators in order to modify ranking results based on the physical reaction of users to seeing specific search engine results on mobile devices. According to the patent, this would involve using your phone camera to detect and register your expression on seeing a specific result, and then determining whether the expression indicated a positive or a negative interaction with the result. If you were to search for nearby restaurants, for example, and the first result was for a restaurant that you'd been to, but didn't like, the camera would capture your frown, and could count against a future high ranking for that restaurant.

Privacy Issues

I don't know about you, but personally, I'm not all that thrilled by the thought of Google watching me via my phone camera to figure out whether I like the result or not. Talk about "Big Brother" watching you... Of course, whether or not Google actually implements something like this remains to be seen. But it's clearly something they're thinking about. You can view the actual patent itself here: Ranking Query Results Using Biometric Parameters Enjoy the future...