Why Google’s Personalized Search matters

22nd
DEC

Why Google’s Personalized Search matters

Posted by Michael under Online Retail, Search

personalized google logo Why Googles Personalized Search matters Since early December, Google has been personalising everybody’s search results, unless they opt out of the personalisation service. Why and how and what does it mean?

What is Google personalised search?

Essentially, Google’s search engine now ‘learns’ from your past searching behaviour to tailor the results it produces in a current search by comparing the results with the ones you clicked on in previous searches. So if you regularly click on search results from the TF, or the Daily Mirror, more of those search results will start showing up in future searches, because Google will give them a higher ranking, as compared to other results, because you seem to favour their content.

Any user can easily opt out of the personalisation option, and already most journalists are opting out, because it’s not in their interest to have their search results limited in this way – whether the general public will understand what is happening and how it affects their access to the internet is another matter.

Why does it matter?

A good question, to which the answers, as yet, are not clear. One troubling aspect of the situation is that Google is being coy about the percentage of search results, per searcher, that are being personalised – is it 80% or 20%?

And does it mean that, over time, a searcher will only see results from sites they favour, so if you prefer to buy British, for example, and therefore tend to click on British businesses in a search list, would you, over time, end up ONLY seeing British business results? Google says no because it wants to maintain ‘diversity’, and to ensure that areas of the web are not ‘inaccessible’ to people because of their search history. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be seismic changes in the way online retailers and other businesses find themselves being represented in searches over time.

What is the impact likely to be?

As yet there are only questions, rather than answers, but those questions are crucial ones for the SEO market:

1. Can this effort by Google to drive personalisation, as an opt-out rather than an opt-in feature, be seen as a counter attack on SEO?
2. Will new sites suffer as a result of the creation of a personalised search history; how does a new brand become a favourite and; what could the break-through mechanisms be that would allow this to happen?
3. How can website managers adequately judge their site ranking in Google with personalisation being applied?
4. How confused will users be by the different kind of results they get as they move between computers and find that items that appeared high on their ‘personalised search’ computer don’t show up on the first page of their ‘public’ computer or one they share with other people at home or work?

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