Personalized search results at Google
Soon, search results will be different than before. On February 2nd, Google announced that they are going to show personalized search results to everyone who is, while performing the search, logged in to one of Google’s various services. This includes Gmail, Orkut, AdWords, AdSense, Groups, Alerts and all others found here.
When logged in and performing a Google search, your search activity is being recorded, and search history is visible to you here.
Based on this search history data, Google measures and evaluates your personal search preferences and uses this information to present you different, personalized search results. Time will tell how strong personalized search results may differ in future. First tests are showing a medium offset within the Top 10 results (thanks to Search Engines Roundtable for testing this), however, changes may be more drastically as the search history grows.
While talking about the consequences of Personalized Search, two other questions arise:
- What about the future of SEO?
- What about privacy issues?
Personalized Search and the future of SEO
Personalized search means search based on individual user preferences. So what does that mean for SEO? Basically it means that it will become even more important to tailor webpages for the surfers instead of the search engines. That’s what SEO trends have been tending to go to anyway: usability, compatibility, unique content.
The impact of personalized search on the SEO market should not be over-evaluated at the moment though. Only a low percentage of surfers are logged in to Google services while performing a Google search. However, we can expect this percentage to increase in future, as the various Google Services that require surfers to sign in will probably be gaining more market share.
Personalized search and privacy issues
I for one do not feel well thinking of having all my search queries stored indefinitely by a large company such as Google and I believe that I should at least have the right to delete them whenever I want.
Fortunately, on the personalized Search History Page (only visible when logged in), Google gives surfers the option to delete their search history. So if you’re concerned about your privacy, check the search history page once in a while.