Google’s ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off.

I agree with Search Engine Guide’s Jennifer Laycock that this is a little bit on the creepy side. Do I really want Google telling me what job I should have? If they can get that personal, what will stop the from telling me what I should eat for lunch, or how many children to have? I can’t imagine anyone giving that kind of authority and control to Google anyway. But is that where all of this personalisation stuff is going?

I use iGoogle, the search engine’s personalisation feature. I haven’t seen anything real helpful yet, except for the fact that I can go back and see how many searches I’ve made during a certain period of time. Eventually, Google will be able to view my trends and make recommendations based on a particular search I’ve made. I suspect by that time they will have started selling targeted advertising that will appear on MY personalisation page. Personlised ads, if you will. And I thought I was getting away from the advertising.

None of the search engines have come anywhere near perfecting their personalisation features. But all of them are trying. It’s just a matter of time before we all log on to our favorite search engine – probably Google – and be hit in the face with a pre-load video advertisement targeted specifically to our interests, which will be garnered by our past 20,000 searches. This is the same type of technology Amazon.com uses to recommend certain products based on your past purchases, something I’d expect of an online retail store. I’m not so sure I want my search engine doing it, though.

ASM Development can help you with all your SEO & web design needs
Scotland SEO Blog

Recent Entries

• Why A Search Engine Googopoly Is Bad For The Internet
• Blogging For The Sake Of Blogging Is Not Blogging
• How To Create An Effective Social Marketing Tweet
• Internal Linking – Don’t Be Afraid Of The Long Tail
• Adding Your Scotland Based Local Business To AOL
• Don’t Be Too Quick To Dismiss Google Buzz
• Are Guest Posts A Bad Link Building Strategy?
• Can You Overdo SEO?
• Review Sites And SEO For Scotland Local Businesses
• What Effect Will HTML5 Have On Web Design And SEO

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Search Engines. 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.