martinibuster - 3:46 pm on Dec 14, 2012 (gmt 0)

personalization of the SERPs based on location

That's a good example of the serps shedding traditional SEO ranking factors and using a different set of data to solve a user intent problem.

Vanessa Fox wrote an article this past summer [searchengineland.com] that to me was the clearest summarization of how Google is shedding traditional ranking factors like links etc. She identifies a few areas as examples where supplemental data is injected, where the ranking factors can change, as well as where it doesn't work. Here are three examples she gave:

* Searcher Intent

* Correcting Misspellings

* Synonyms