The news that Google was moving toward personalizing search results a few weeks ago has produced a bit of worry among some search marketers. After all, when the search results are different for everyone, how to you work on increasing the rankings of the site you are optimizing. With those concerns in mind, Gord Hotchkiss sat down to speak with Matt Cutts about how Google's plans to tailor search results to the searcher might impact the future of search engine optimization.

The interview is full of interesting observations from both Matt and Gord.

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[Matt]If we had the ability to say someone is searching for Palo Alto or someone is searching for Kirkland or Redmond and give them local newspapers, truly local newspapers, that would be a good win for users as well. So over time, I would expect search results to serve a broader and broader array of services. The idea of a monolithic set of search results for a generic term will probably start to fade away...

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[Gord]If personalization makes the search experience better, as I believe it will when it's fully implemented, it marks a dramatic competitive advantage. In a market as hotly contested as search is, I still believe that the amount of personalization that appears on the search results page will continue to grow, likely faster than Google is anticipating right now.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the growth of personalized search. Not only will it force search engines to learn how to provide even better search results, it will also make reverse engineering the search results much more difficult. This will mean that the marketers that focus on building search friendly web sites that are full of good content and that figure out unique ways to promote them (via viral marketing, blog marketing, link baiting, etc...) will rise to the top in the areas where they should. It will help marketers begin to focus more on the long-tail of search and less on hitting the super-competitive phrases that send plenty of traffic, but very few buyers.

Basically, it will help move the industry away from magic formulas and toward creative marketing that relies on common sense and true understanding of the customer.

Matt comments on the shift from money phrases as well.

[Matt]here are so many people who think if I ranked number one for my trophy phase I win or my life will be good. When, in fact, numerous people demonstrated that if you chase after the long tail and make a good site that can match many, many different users' queries you might end up with more traffic than if you had that trophy phrase.

Gord follows this up with an excellent point about the upcoming need to shift toward focusing more on the user than the search engine. While search marketers have long pointed out the need for that line of thinking, the stark reality of search is that most web sites DO end up focusing more on the search engine than on the visitor, leading to good search results and poor conversion rates.

[Gord]...you have to start focusing on the user. Right now the basis of most search marketing campaigns is a list of key phrases. We don't really pay any attention to the people who may be using those phrases, because we can focus on the phrase itself.