Comments on: Google’s Personalized Results: The “New Normal” That Deserves Extraordinary Attention

By: adproducts

adproducts — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:48:11 +0000

With the advent of personalised search and other related things, SEO becomes more of a challenge but no less relevant. In fact it is right now very relevant and even urgent!

No matter the level of personalisation Google offers, it can only vary result listings when people search for the same thing multiple times, and will generally only change results listings when a lower than top link has been clicked on more than once.

Although people are creatures of habit, millions of people every day search for things they have not yet searched for, giving raw results. And even personalised results will not be completely different to raw results – there will be some variation, but not a completely different set of listings!

I think for basic SEO each business needs to ensure they are near the top of listings for a raw (un-personalised result), and then not worry about who may be getting different personalised results – there will still be enough people getting all or some of the standard raw results to make it worthwhile. Also, two or three years down the track when google has for some people a couple years worth of cookie data, it will be harder to break into a person’s personalised results – right now when the data banks are smaller it’s easiers, to most important to get found now.

It does however mean that SEO is not the be all and end all – it means that a wider online and social marketing focus is also required in order to achieve business success.

By: jebbiii

jebbiii — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:26:15 +0000

If I was Bing I would consider trumpeting this fact to the world: “BING HAS UNFILTERED RESULTS”, “NO BIAS”, “GET THE REAL RESULTS” (that is until I started doing it too)

jebbiii

By: pleer

pleer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:28:19 +0000

Why has Google not made things easier for the searcher to let them understand that their search results are personalised now? There is no easy way for a computer illiterate to simply toggle between personalised and generic results. If this was made clearer then people may indeed use both options to see what results are output.

However, aren’t we just theoretically facing a similar task when we try to optimise results for two different search engines like Google vs Bing?

Alex,
http://www.pleer.co.uk/

By: stepintothelight

stepintothelight — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:56:56 +0000

There is a solution to all of the debate here. Use, and encourage others to use a non-personalized search engine ; ).

The funny thing here is that, although Google has complete control over what information is conjured up in its results, and personalized results spoon feed us even more, people are smart enough to know whether or not they have found what they are looking for in a search.

So if Google presents 10 “options” based more on our past search behavior, so what? If a searcher doesn’t see what they need, they will continue down the results, refine their search, or go to another source.

If I am searching for an “internet marketing company”, how might google apply personalization to that? Let’s assume it is a non-geo search. $10 says they can’t apply much or any useful “personalization”. Might they determine I am looking for U.S. only companies? Might they determine that I have searched specifically (and clicked on) local search marketing companies? So does that mean I will be served up only local search marketing companies in the future when I broaden out to “internet marketing company” again? Perhaps. But if I don’t get the results I want, I refine search or bail.

I don’t think personalization is useful for much of the common user’s search behavior. I also don’t think Google is nimble enough or clever enough to really serve up tailored results that exactly fit its users.

Cutts says personalization will happen in about 20% of searches. 20% can mean a bunch of money for a bunch of people (one way or the other). But it also means that 80% is not affected (yet). So we’re talking about varied rankings (possibly) for 20% of the searches out there. Those of us who still think it is useful to associate rankings with traffic will merely add “personalization disabled rankings” to our ranking reports, along with the existing caveat for local search results.

By: Infoserve Marketing

Infoserve Marketing — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:12:32 +0000

Great post, and 100% correct about it not getting as much attention as it should. I made my own post on my blog about it, just to try and spread it further.

I’m still sceptical about how much impact this is going to have on search results, will it just be part of the ranking algorithm and also what types of searches will it appear mostly for. I think the big winners here are companies like Amazon.

By: seoword

seoword — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:24:43 +0000

I do understand what Google has changed. Even after listening to your concerns, I still don’t think this changes the landscape that much. Obviously SEO changes constantly and this is another development we have to deal with, but it’s not that big a deal. Personalized search has been around for years. Expanding the people who get personalized results changes things some, but it’s not revolutionary. As Danny mentioned, search results positions have fluctuated due to geography and other factors already.
Getting embarrassed in a meeting because you are surprised with search results fluctuations does not mean the end of SEO. Educating them on the reasons for variations would help.
The point I made earlier still applies, qualified traffic and the leads it generates is the measure of effectiveness. What a client sees on his office computer can make you feel good (or bad) but it doesn’t increase the client’s revenue numbers.
I agree with Danny that this development deserves more than a Friday news release. We need to be able to explain this to the public. But the fundamentals of SEO haven’t changed.

By: JamieKitson

JamieKitson — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:24:15 +0000

What a lot of fuss over nothing. If it doesn’t deliver the results people want they’ll stop using it, internet users using free services are fickle, and/or google will fix it. And I think you’re wrong in your assumption that people want impartial results, I don’t read the Telegraph because I wouldn’t like what it told me, I prefer to have by preconceptions confirmed by reading the Guardian. Maybe the reason why this story hasn’t been reported much is because it isn’t much of a story. Wait, SEOs and marketers are going to have a harder time? Oh boo hoo! My heart bleeds.

By: JHardy

JHardy — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:22:51 +0000

I have a couple of questions that I can’t find any answers to:

1) Do AdWords count? If someone clicks on one of our AdWords ads does it then make us more likely to appear in their Personalized Search results?

2) Is this keyword or niche specific? e.g. if someone searches for “locationxyz history”, does it make you more likely to appear highly when that same person next searches for “locationxyz travel”?

By: Dan3

Dan3 — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:16:11 +0000

This changes a hell of a lot. Here’s a real world example that’s less than two hours old. Just left a client meeting where we searched on the same terms from the same wi-fi. Our results had them at number 2 on our laptop; their results had them at 140 on their desktop. We’ve been making site structure changes and searching the same terms a lot lately, so clearly the results showed high for us. We walked in proud as peacocks because a half hour earlier we checked some of our terms and all were top 10. We walked in announcing it in fact. To say that we left the meeting flushed with embarrassment is understating it.

I agree with Jon: seoword – this changes the SEO game entirely.

By: paullwolborsky

paullwolborsky — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:29:14 +0000

This is a freaking disaster! An important part of Google’s social relevance is it’s reproducability. Lose that and worse, not know about it degrades people’s ability to share this tool.

But it’s an important feature, so Google needs to offer 2 modes of search, public or personal, and make it VERY clear which mode you’re in.

Paul Wolborsky
http://www.ajaxofalltrades.com