Perform a search using Google as of today, and you are likely to get some handy SEO tips as well as more personal search results. The new and improved service is however causing some alarm bells to ring wildly, not just from users worried about their privacy, but from sites that use organic SEO strategies to boost the profile of their business online.
Personal Search Results
Before now, users that were logged into their Google profile were used to seeing personalised results returned, based on their individual browsing data and social networking habits gleaned from various Google-owned web properties such as Gmail and Youtube. Now though, Google has introduced an opt-out rather than opt-in setup based on recent online activity to return results based on the past 180 days of browser history. Although we all know that the search engine knows quite a bit about our search habits already, the new feature is capable of tracking activity outside of its usual channels, opting to use a cookie set from a domain other than its usual google.com. With Adsense, Google Analytics and the Google Toolbar there are not many corners of the web that the monoliths all-seeing eye cannot reach, effectively being party to your every online move. To get around this small and seemingly unpopular factor, Google have made it clear that the feature can be disabled. The question however, is not about whether the majority of users choose to turn it off or not, it’s about if they even know it exists in the first place.
Chances are that even in five years time, around 75 per cent of users will be unaware of the feature, especially if it does return the relevant results it hopes to. Google will learn what a user is trying to find and so offer those results first. For example a search for the term ‘windows’ will return results for double glazing as well as computer software. Based on which result is usually chosen, Google will likely present those results above the others in future queries. It will also be capable of returning a certain type of result no matter what the search is for. So, if a user is known for often looking up recipes, a search for ‘brandy’ will return cookery sites as opposed to off licenses. Quite how it will work and just how personalised it will be is still being kept tightly under wraps, and even direct questions about what percentage of the results in listings will be tailored to the user remain unanswered.
SEO
The effect this will have on the SEO industry is at yet unclear, but it seems that the new system will favour PPC campaigns above organic search results, which at the end of the day is what lines the pockets in Googleland. What is certain is that diversity will suffer and once again, it will be the big boys at the top, with smaller competitors left in their wake. By making sure this feature is automatically on Google has made sure that the majority of people will be using it, even if SEO experts choose to have the feature switched off. Ultimately habits will define the future of this personalised search, and if the big names dominate, it is possible that loyal Googlers will look elsewhere for more diverse results.
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I personally feel that we may be jumping the gun a little in the way many of us SEO’s panic at any sort of change to the status quo of search.
We need to take a deep breath,relax and see what the situation is when it happens. We have quite a few changes happening with personalised search and the caffeine update immanent.At this moment in time we don’t know what the extent of the personalisation will be, it could just be minor. In fact it may just make search results even more relevant and help us on the seo front.