With the announcement by Google earlier this month that it has added its new Personalized Search feature to all Google users - not only those that have and are logged into their Google account, search engine professionals all around the world began considering the possible effects on their businesses. Some SEO & SEM professionals immediately saw the sky falling, others around the web only perceived minor changes to the SEO landscape and a big chunk of SEO & SEM professionals are still watching carefully to determine the true extent of this new modification to the world’s most visited search engine. While there is no denying that Personalized Search can and will have an impact on the SEO community, here are just some of the possible effects that may or may not happen as a result of Personal Search- only time will tell!
Is SEO Dead?
Some of the first comments I began reading around the web was that SEO is dead! Not true, SEO is not dead. I think that these comments go way too far. Yes, SEO is always evolving to meet the changes in the major search engines and because search results may be skewered to a user’s personal search preferences does not mean SEO is no longer needed.
The information that Google has released states that Personal Search will use data collected over the last 6 months from a computer (through a cookie- since users no longer needs to be signed into Google) to deliver more personalized results. While one of the effects is that search engine ranking pages for specific keywords an individual searches for may be different from computer to computer, by no means do I think Google will simply reshuffle the deck of SERPS and throw out all websites on the top pages- never to be seen or heard from again. In fact, after thinking about the changes that Google has now implemented, it is more important than ever for a website to practice proper SEO and SEM techniques in order to get noticed to the right audience.
Search Results Will Now Be Skewered
Besides seeing the comment that SEO is dead all over the web, I also read many comments regarding reporting and page rank. Since Google’s Personalized Search will deliver different ranking results to each individual user for a specific keyword, many wondered what is the sense of reporting the rankings to their clients. Some have posted that they will simply tell all their clients that they will no longer receive a monthly ranking report. Here again are some ideas on this issue. It is absolutely true that Google’s Personal Search by design tries to tailor search results to an individual using past search results over the last 6 months as a baseline of what a user is interested in. Since every user will now have slightly different results, it will now make it impossible to report accurate SERP results to a client. While this may be true to an extent that doesn’t mean reporting is no longer a useful tool for clients.
There are lots of things to consider regarding SERPs. First off, search engine ranking results have always been dynamic- constantly changing, many keyword rankings change hour by hour. And yes, while there will be no longer one set page ranking for a keyword, it should be noted that for the vast majority of keywords and for the vast majority of users, keyword rankings should not be grossly skewered across the board.
One reason is that Google always wants to deliver the most relevant and high quality content to its users. If this holds true, high quality, relevant sites will always rise to the top. There might be a discrepancy of a few places, but for the most part, I do not think that high quality, relevant, engaging sites will fall off the edge of the world into the abyss. If this does holds true, then Google has failed at its job. This is why, even brand new sites with no history will still be able to rise above to the top and be mixed in with the highest ranked sites. Does this make running reports more difficult- yes, however there is a way to disable Personal Search to get a hopefully more organic look at the rankings (http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54048 Google gives you directions to disable Personal Search).
Factors to Focus On
If Personal Search results will be different for every user then why run a report? While you will be able to run an organic report once you remove the cookie, the results will still be skewered from user to user, however you can receive a ballpark feel of what the results generally are. While that may not be good enough for many clients, it is also important to note that there are plenty of other metrics that can be extremely helpful and probably are already part of your reporting strategy including, traffic and conversions. In addition, for many clients, your business relationship with them won’t change, they will continue to assess whether or not your SEO and SEM efforts are returning enough value to their bottom line to warrant and continue your services.
What Affect Will Personal Search Have On My Immediate Rankings/Traffic?
I saw this question a lot and here is my attempt to answer it. Let’s say there are two types of searches that many commonly perform: the first type is when a person searches for a keyword that he or she has already searched for in the past (maybe a website such as CNN.com or a keyword phrase such as “Texas business news”). The second type of common search is when a person searches for a keyword for the very first time, let’s say: “motorcycle helmet”.
For the example of the first type of search, the person has searched for this keyword plenty of times and has probably clicked on the same or a group of very similar websites in the past 6 months. Google simply delivers the most popular sites for “Texas business news” that the person has clicked on in the past and for those that search for a specific website like CNN.com, Google obviously delivers the appropriate home page or secondary webpage for this site. In this scenario, normal SEO will not be affected and while page rank may be skewered, a web developer or business owner should not see any noticeable changes in their traffic or conversions. Even if the number one ranking site on the page would automatically change to a non-relevant site such as “Bill’s Ice Cream”, the overwhelming majority of individuals would simply dismiss the irrelevant ranking and click on a link that delivered the information they were looking for. Let’s not even forget about the vast majority of the population that have already become web savvy and now simply plug the URL directly into their browser, such as www.cnn.com to be directly taken to the site of their choice.
The second scenario is a little bit more complicated, but for those clients that think they will simply fall into the abyss due to Google’s Personal Search, I doubt that will be the case. In all cases, the one constant that Google has always tried to put above others is to deliver relevant, quality content. I think this component will continue to prevail. Those that create quality content regarding relevant keywords that they focus on should continue to do well. Quality content usually means a quality website that is engaging and updated frequently. So for someone that searches for the keyword “motorcycle helmet”, odds are very good that the top searches would be ones that are relevant and offer quality content.
However, there will be times when personal search will probably kick in and either deliver your site to a user as being higher ranking or lower ranking. One of these scenarios I think will be common is for keywords with geo-targeting. For instance, a keyword such as “Houston motorcycle helmet” would probably not do well for those that live in Maine; however, if you are a business in Houston, most of your sales from the keyword “Houston motorcycle helmet” probably come from the Houston area anyway. Meaning that for many geo-targeted keywords, you might actually benefit due to Personal Search as it would remove all sites that weren’t in your region. For those businesses that are mainly fixed and do lots of business in their area, including restaurants, contractors, etc Personal Search should be a boom. While traffic might not necessarily increase, the quality of traffic will probably be better targeted increasing one’s bottom line.
While researching this topic, I came across a video created by Google to explain Personal Search. One of the examples they gave as to how Personal Search will improve the search experience was for conducting a search on the keyword “SOX”. Obviously the keyword SOX has a variety of different meanings. It could mean baseball teams such as the Red Sox or White Sox, it could mean the Sarbanes-Oxley Act or it could mean clothing that you wear. The video went on to show you that in this situation using personal search, Google would already knows what you are searching for due to the fact that it has monitored your search history for the past 6 months. So for an accountant constantly searching tax codes, Google would deliver the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and for the baseball fan in Boston- the Boston Red Sox.
While this example is simplistic, it makes you consider what Google wants to deliver to its users. Actually, I always believed that most web surfers were savvy enough to search for keywords that were relevant to the information they wanted to find. It seems far fetched that a lifelong baseball fan would do a search everyday for the keyword SOX only to become constantly frustrated daily at the amount of other semantic terms in his SERPs. Thankfully with Google’s new Personal Search, this lifelong baseball fan will finally be given the correct results immediately. While the scenario is a little tongue in cheek and simplistic, it does make you wonder. You would think that most people searching for information via Google would use more than one keyword instead of a generic, multi meaning keyword.
Apple is another good example. If you are searching for information regarding Apple iPhone apps, you wouldn’t just put in the keyword Apple, or even iPhone, you would put in as much information as necessary, such as “Apple iPhone Apps GPS”.
This is why I think that while the SERPs for everyone will be slightly skewered, relevant content will always be successful ensuring that traffic or ranking won’t drop off precipitously. SEO and SEM are still extremely useful in continuing to ensure that a site is on target for relevant keywords, engaging in its various media usage (Universal Search) and always fresh (updated frequently with unique content).
A Few Quick Thoughts About Personal Search
Google’s Personal Search has been integrated into Google for years (at least since 2005), so while the rankings may be skewered from user to user, it is safe to suggest that what sites Google found to be high quality and relevant a few short months ago will continue to rank well.
Web analytics such as traffic and ultimately returning value to a client will continue to be highly important.
Universal Search may play a bigger role in affecting the ranking of your site to specific individuals. Components such as video, images, audio and more will continue to grow in importance in making a website engaging and compelling to visitors.
Bing has an opportunity to become much more important to SEO professionals as they look to affect its organic rankings.
Page Rank will have less and less impact for a client as more and more variables are integrated into Google’s algorithm to enhance an individual’s search experience.
It is possible that newly created websites will find it harder to rank at the top of the page rank due to the fact of little or none exposure. However, it is safe to say that quality, relevant websites will always rise to the top, especially if they are engaging and marketed properly.
Generic keywords will be harder to rank high in the search engines and will probably result in less and less traffic as more descriptive keywords will deliver much more relevant results. It will be more important to focus on more descriptive keywords and if possible geo-targeted keywords.
On page optimization such as Meta Tags, titles and text will play a larger role in helping Google find sites that are relevant.
While the delivery method of results for Google has changed, the algorithm itself looks like it has not changed. This gives many SEO’s plenty of comfort that a major overhaul of Google is not what Personal Search is trying to accomplish.
Obviously, there is a lot to think about, however in the coming months, more and more details and information regarding how Personal Search affects us in SEO and SEM will become more apparent. I look forward to revisiting this subject in the future.
