Google wants to change the nature of search - again.

The search engine all but invented search queries as we know them today. If it weren’t for Google’s emphasis on link popularity, much of what we know about search engine optimization would be a blur. Search queries would likely look a whole lot different than they do.

A couple of years ago, Google allowed its users to create a personalized home page. On that page you can choose from among various features including news, an online dictionary, Wikipedia search, National Geographic photo of the day, weather, Word of the Day, This Day in History, a notepad, Google Map Search, games and a ton more. One nice feature of the Google personalized page is you can customize the look of it by dragging and dropping the elements across the page. But Google uses it for another purpose as well.

Along with the Google Toolbar and Bookmarks, Google will take your personalized page and create customized search results for you based on past searches. If you are logged into your account, for instance, any search you make will be cataloged for future reference. So if you make similar searches in the future then whatever pages you have visited or bookmarked will rise higher up in the rankings on your serp for certain keywords. This has the potential to seriously skew search rankings and here’s why:

1. In the past, search queries were based on keyword searches and no matter who made the search the same pages would appear on the Google SERP for a particular keyword. Personalized search changes that. Link popularity, for instance, diminishes in importance because if I have bookmarked a travel site that I like and search for travel in the future then my bookmarked travel site could appear at the top of my rankings, or on the first page, even though it has a low link popularity rating and would otherwise appear on Page 14. Personalized search turns everything we know about search on its head.
2. Over time, personalized searches will be optimized for the individual making the search rather than the keyword being searched for. This will make SEO work more difficult for SEOs and webmasters trying to improve their rankings. New sites that rank well for certain keywords on organic searches may never be found by persons who have a long history of searching for a particular topic or keyword if their preferences dictate other options. For example, let’s say a person follows a certain football team. They’ve bookmarked the team’s official website, the blog of a favorite commentator, ESPN.com and a couple of fan websites. If they’ve been following the team for a number of years, let’s say five years, then when they conduct a search their own bookmarked sites may appear on page 1 of their individualized SERP while a new fan site that is high quality may get bypassed even though it is highly optimized. This could pose a problem for relevant research.
3. You can also turn off the search history feature by clicking “pause,” but a word of warning: it’s hard to find. One page on Google Accounts says it is on “this page,” but in actuality you have to click “Search History” and it is buried at the bottom of a menu of items. Pause could skew the search results even more, however, because if you include certain searches in your history and not others then your personalized searches may not always be consistent even for similar keywords.

Google doesn’t say how popular this feature is and it’s difficult to see how aggressively the search engine markets it. But if personalization catches on and other search engines migrate to that model as well, search as we know it could be dead. SEOs trying to optimize their Google AdWords accounts and websites may find it more and more difficult to reach their targets unless they build wide berths of partnerships in order to reach specific markets through competitors and other similar websites. The only question that remains is how much will personalization actually change Google searches and whether we should really be concerned.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 2:31 pm and is filed under MAIN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.