Is This How Google Kills SEO? Personalized Search For Everyone
December 5, 2009 by admin · Leave a Comment
Google has announced that beginning Dec 4 it will roll out personalized search results for anyone who uses it’s search engine, regardless of whether they’ve opted-in to a previously existing personalization feature. This means there is no objective baseline search ranking. All SERPS will display different results based on how Google has interpreted a users previous search behavior. Is this the end of professional SEO? Probably not the end but it is definitely a step in the direction of diminishing it’s value. Sure you can opt-out but how many users would know to do this? It’s a step in the wrong direction and opens up a tremendous privacy issue. The real power behind this is, of course, the additional user data that can be applied to “more effective” Adwords sales.
Below is an excerpt from Google’s official announcement.
Today we’re helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than forty languages. Now when you search using Google, we will be able to better provide you with the most relevant results possible. For example, since I always search for [recipes] and often click on results from epicurious.com, Google might rank epicurious.com higher on the results page the next time I look for recipes. Other times, when I’m looking for news about Cornell University’s sports teams, I search for [big red]. Because I frequently click on www.cornellbigred.com, Google might show me this result first, instead of the Big Red soda company or others.
