The Affect of Personalization in Search Engine Optimization
The Affect of Personalization in Search Engine Optimization
Matt Cutts, Google’s spam king, claims that it will be tough times for black hat SEO artists because SEOs will have to focus more on users and less on algorithm reverse engineering. I was curious to what black hats were thinking so I cruised over to SEO Black Hat and found this post. Apparently, they are excited about personalized search and view it as a great thing. Additionally, nobody posted any comments about how this might affect their jobs as blackhat SEOs.
I don’t think there’s going to be too much to worry about for SEOs. Google Bookmarks are going to have a huge impact on people’s results. With that said, I see social bookmarking campaigns being just as big, if not bigger, than link building campaigns.
Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google, said that personalized results only show up in about one of every five searches, and would only lift two results into the top 10, never replacing the number one organic result.
There are many caveats I want to address with personalization. The top result is typically the most visited result for any search query. If the top result never changes then that’s not really much personalization now is it? If you’re someone who typically uses the “I’m feeling lucky” button in Google then you’ll always get the same result whether you’re signed into Google or not. Also, everything you click on gets ranked higher in your personalized results. How does Google determine if you liked what you clicked on or not? That’s a major flaw in this system right now.
Another issue is the latency involved with temporary search patterns and localization. What if you’re on vacation for two weeks in New York and you’re searching for local restaurants, hotels, clubs, etc. When you return home your results are going to be skewed towards New York. How long will it take to recognize you’re not searching for New York based businesses anymore when you return home to Utah or wherever? What if your kids hop on your computer to search for something like kids games? The next time you search for games online your results will be tainted.
Personally, I’d like to see Google more focused on semantic mapping and clustering of search terms while it refines personalization. They already have started implementing this feature for select search phrases, but I think they need to push it a bit more. I think Clusty.com and Quintura.com have both done a good job of semantic clustering.
The Affect of Personalization in Search Engine Optimization - To learn more about this author, visit Jordan Kasteler's Website.
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Personalization has been creating a lot of hype in the search engine optimization scene lately. Personalization has been implemented into the results of Google accounts that are signed in for quite some time now. Google collects your search history and displays results based off of what you’ve searched for and clicked on in the past. Many search engine marketers and optimizers have been reluctant to Google pushing this mainstream. Reason being is that it makes the game of SEO a lot harder when everyone has a different set of results.
Matt Cutts, Google’s spam king, claims that it will be tough times for black hat SEO artists because SEOs will have to focus more on users and less on algorithm reverse engineering. I was curious to what black hats were thinking so I cruised over to SEO Black Hat and found this post. Apparently, they are excited about personalized search and view it as a great thing. Additionally, nobody posted any comments about how this might affect their jobs as blackhat SEOs.
I don’t think there’s going to be too much to worry about for SEOs. Google Bookmarks are going to have a huge impact on people’s results. With that said, I see social bookmarking campaigns being just as big, if not bigger, than link building campaigns.
Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience at Google, said that personalized results only show up in about one of every five searches, and would only lift two results into the top 10, never replacing the number one organic result.
There are many caveats I want to address with personalization. The top result is typically the most visited result for any search query. If the top result never changes then that’s not really much personalization now is it? If you’re someone who typically uses the “I’m feeling lucky” button in Google then you’ll always get the same result whether you’re signed into Google or not. Also, everything you click on gets ranked higher in your personalized results. How does Google determine if you liked what you clicked on or not? That’s a major flaw in this system right now.
Another issue is the latency involved with temporary search patterns and localization. What if you’re on vacation for two weeks in New York and you’re searching for local restaurants, hotels, clubs, etc. When you return home your results are going to be skewed towards New York. How long will it take to recognize you’re not searching for New York based businesses anymore when you return home to Utah or wherever? What if your kids hop on your computer to search for something like kids games? The next time you search for games online your results will be tainted.
Personally, I’d like to see Google more focused on semantic mapping and clustering of search terms while it refines personalization. They already have started implementing this feature for select search phrases, but I think they need to push it a bit more. I think Clusty.com and Quintura.com have both done a good job of semantic clustering.
The Affect of Personalization in Search Engine Optimization - To learn more about this author, visit Jordan Kasteler's Website.
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John AlexanderJohn has taught keyword research and SEO skills to small groups of business owners and Webmasters from over 80 different countries world wide since 2002. John is also the Director of Search Engine Academy ; Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles, author of the very first comprehensive online search engine marketing courses at SEO Training Online and the SEO Workshop Resource Center. I look forward to hearing from you! - Visit John Alexander's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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