February 6, 2007 Comments
No, it's not the end of SEO, but I'm sure at least a few folks will begin shouting that message from the blogtops this week. What am I talking about? Google's decision to force personalized search results on anyone that searches while logged in to their Google account. While some may be happy about this, most of the folks that I've read are not. In fact, I've now logged myself out of my Google account for everyday searching.
From the Google announcement:
We have two main ways of personalizing your Google experience. First, you can customize products and services like the Google Personalized Homepage. Personalizing your homepage gives you the at-a-glance information that you care about—such as your latest Gmail messages, news headlines, or to-do list—right at your fingertips, just the way you want it.
Second, we offer automatic personalization through things like personalized search and recommendations. Our goal with these types of technologies is to make your Google search experience better based on what we know about your preferences, without you having to do any extra work.
Today, we're taking another step toward making personalization more available to you by combining these two into a single signed-in experience. Now, when you're signed in, you'll have access to a personalized Google—one that combines personalized search results and a personalized homepage.
You do have the option to opt-out of personalized search while still being logged in to your account. Danny's got the scoop on how to do that.
I'm not opposed to the idea of personalized search, I think it has quite a bit of potential. The problem I see is that I use this laptop for both work and personal time. My husband uses it as well. Unless I want to use three different Google accounts (and who wants to log in and out all day?) then Google really isn't going to get a clear picture of what I want. The things that I research for work or for my hobby sites are not going to be representative of what I want when I'm searching for fun.
That said, this movement toward personalized search will make search engine marketing more interesting. We've quickly moving away from standard search results that are the same for everyone and that's not a bad thing. Businesses will be forced to look beyond magical SEO formulas and will have to focus on good content offered up on a search friendly site.
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