This is SearchWiki If a bunch of people were to delete the same site because it's totally irrelevant, absent of quality, or blatant spam, I think Google might demote that site. That said, I volunteer my POS website for an experiment: directdiscstores.com I rank no. 1 for the useless phrase "adobe direct disc stores". If you iGoogle, please go ahead and delete me from your personalized search for that phrase. Also, please reply to this thread so I can keep track of the number of participants. Let's see if my rankings drop.
no it won't affect the rankings in SERP for other users. but when you will be using the personalized search with the same keyword or keyphrase, the result will not be displayed to you
Interestingly, my rankings have dropped since this post. From 1st to 4th. "See all notes for this SearchWiki" shows no personalization though. Maybe this is updated periodically.
Hmmm. After logging out of my iGoogle account and repeating the search, I rank number 1. Looks as though Google personalized my search results...
I don't see this as way for Google to actually improve the search results as this could also be easily manipulated by groups. Yea, it's only suppose to display the results to the specific user but I am sure it will be used as a calculating factor with the overall SERPS. I have also noticed you no longer have to be logged in to an account for customized search results to appear.