"Search: Social, Personal, & Everywhere" by Greg Notess, Montana State University

Notess talked about the increasing personalization of search results, and how these results could be used, or avoided, in looking for information.  Some simple ways to avoid personalized results are logging out of Google and checking Google.com/settings/ads, which has settings that will vary on different computers and even different browsers on the same computer.  Browsers also have a private mode that does not retain information

However, there are companies like Rapleaf that track U.S.-based email addresses (dashboard.rapleaf.com/see_your_info_signup) and BlueCava that tracks devices.  There are opt-out options for Google and Bing, and on networkadvertising.org to opt out of tracking on multiple websites at once.

There are also alternative search engines that don't track user information, such as DuckDuckGo.com, dontbubble.us, ix.quickn.com

Facebook allows searches such as "people who like libraries" - the search results will include filters to narrow the list of results.

If you have a shortened link (e.g. bitley/12345) and wonder what page you'll end up on if you click it, try Wheredoesthislinkgo.com, knowurl.com, clyvs.com/urlexpander

For map/geographic searches, Google & Bing Maps have street views and varying results due to different data sources and imagery dates.  There's also the option of viewing historical photos.