[michaelbuckbee]

The personalization seems to help if only because you need to disambiguate the english language.

I'm often searching for "ruby" (the programming language not the gemstone) and need to find "gems" (modules for the "ruby" language) and often these have names that have other meanings like "devise", "pundit", "ransack", "bootstrap", "carrierwave", "paperclip", "fog", "cucumber", "refinery", etc etc.

Similarly, having some basics about your geographic location, spoken language, etc. would seem to be quite helpful. If only to help separate out things like that there are 8000+ "Park Street" in the US when I type in an address and Google gives me the one closest to my location.

[orclev]

That's at least partially the fault of that particular language getting cute with their naming and not considering the impact that has a on trying to disambiguate things without having to introduce further context. Ruby isn't the only one who commits that particular sin (looking at you Chef). Java arguably commits the same sin with regard to the core language, but considering how rarely "java" is used on its own in reference to the coffee based beverage that's fairly harmless. Moral of the story, stop getting cute with the names of your stuff and naming a bunch of different tools/concepts/frameworks with ambiguous names. If you must do so at least use some clever portmanteaus and don't just straight up steal other words that already have specific completely unrelated meanings.

grumble grumble chef knife, chef cookbook, chef recipe, chef cucumber incoherent mumbling

[cyphunk]

you imply that when someone that is not a programmer, and say works in the rare stones industry, goes to google to search for ruby gems, that they are not shown a bunch of programmer garbage?

[pawelk]

Personalized disambiguation can be really handy. I'm a hobby woodworker, I've recently bought a vintage Record #4 hand plane and wanted to learn more about it. I found out this model was manufactured in 1939-1945.

So without thinking I type record plane 1939-1945 into Google. And guess what? I get information about hand planes, pictures of hand planes in the images section, links to ebay auctions for vintage planes etc, and in between these there were only a few results related to aircraft combat during WWII.

The same query in incognito mode doesn't return even a single link related to hand tools.

[michaelbuckbee]

I'm implying that Google "learns" over time that I'm more interested in ruby the programming language and that a jeweler would over time get more gemstone related resources.