We’ve been saying it for months, “search is going to get personal”.
Personalization of search is not a new concept. As far back as November 2005,
Google has been looking at ways to incorporate
personalized search into the
results they provide. Google has established a number of personalized search
products including
Google Search History where you can access and manage your
search history from any computer. Personalized search is offered as an option
whenever you sign up for a Google account, which you need to use AdWords, Gmail
or other Google services. You can also add personalization using your
manage
account page. A few years ago, Google Labs saw the release of Google
Personalized Search a service that reorders search results based on your history
of past searches, giving more weight to topics that interest you. The
inevitability of personalized search is upon us.
We’ve seen it with a number of products that the search engines have released in
recent years. More recently, we’ve seen it with Google SERPs and Google's recent
announcement about pushing more users to personalized search results. For some
reason this has created quite a stir with bloggers in the online world.
Personalized search or personalized search results should not come as a surprise
to anyone. The search engines have been collecting data and have been monitoring
user behavior fro quite some time now. For example, when users set up a
personalized account at Yahoo or Google and remain logged into the account, you
can bet that the engines are monitoring activity of the user. Remember all of
the privacy concerns when Google Launched Gmail a few years ago? While some fear
that the engines are invading users’ privacy, they are not necessarily gathering
this information to invade your privacy. Have you ever thought that they are
using this data to provide a better user experience for you?
The Changing Face of Search
As I discussed previously on my initial piece on
personalized search, in order
to provide the most relevant results, the search engines need to provide a
unique SERP to the user, not the traditional universal Search Engines Results
Page that we are all accustomed to viewing. What this means is that the
aesthetic look of a search engine results page will be undergoing a major
metamorphosis in the near future. It already has for me. You see I use a Google
customized home page that includes items such as blog feeds, links to my
favorite sites, weather, stock market data, local movie data, quotes of the day
and more. I have widgets added, online video clips and more. I expect that in
the future when I go to Google or to ASK (or whatever search engine I elect to
use) and perform a query for something, the results page that will be presented
will be unlike the results we see now. Here’s what I expect to see:
- Local
results pertaining to the query I performed
- Video Clips and podcasts
- Relevant Images
- Dictionary definitions
- Related blog links
- Related widgets
- Organic text links based on similar queries/searches
- Organic text links to previously viewed sites
- and yes sponsored ads in some format
ASK is already changing the look of the traditional search pages with the
release of their ASK X project. As a test, go to
ASK X and perform a query for
“personalization”. What you will receive is a variety of results including
images, related search queries, sponsored ads, dictionary listings, news
listings, encyclopedia listings, organic results and more.
We shouldn’t be afraid of personalized search, we should welcome it with open
minds. Think of the opportunities. Personalized search means relevancy, and
relevancy means satisfaction. Search is about finding the answer to something.
It involves a quest for knowledge. It is human nature to seek answers, to seek
knowledge. There are those who state that things happen for a reason and that
the universe has a way of course correcting. Some call this fate, but like
personalization of search I call it inevitability. |
SEO
Jody Nimetz