[Search-l] tracking which urls are clicked in the results?

[jer]

Obviously the data is valuable, associating the search term with  
which result/url was selected, and I've been asked numerous times why  
we're not doing it.  The practical reason why not is simply we  
haven't put any thought into exactly how to incorporate the feedback  
into ranking.  The ideological reason why not is that transparency is  
an important foundation here, and it would be collecting/using data  
in a very non-transparent way.  The privacy reason is that we're  
storing something that may not be explicitly understood by the user  
(although lots of other sites do this already, I don't think that  
just because everyone else is, is a good excuse though).

My question is, is any of this worth overcoming?  Maybe an opt-in,  
only if logged in, and it would be public in your profile, would  
anyone even want to do this?

The very closely related topic would be storing your searches (and  
urls) as a personal history feature.  I'm more of the mindset that we  
need to build tools and features for our community first, before we  
start working much on end-user personal features.

Jer