Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Today we're helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide
That's a staggering statement meaning that every computer accessing Google is now being personalized, signed in or not, so any desktop, laptop or kiosk will start tracking everything everyone does and you won't be able to access the same search results from any two machines.
The possible impact to all is staggering.
I suspect a few folks reading this thread and even some contributing don't really have the first clue about how this personalisation thing is going to work.
There is little evidence that simply searching for a certain term or phrase and visiting a few of the sites on the returned SERPS will either elevate or penalise those pages depending on how long you stay there or click through if you use that search again at some time in the future. There is evidence that if you repeatedly do this and click on one site and stay there a while moving through a few pages will elevate that page. This is the happy webmaster effect you can get your own site to a false #1 position quite easily.
There is no evidence that Google is going to play word association football
much used in the practice makes perfect of psychoanalysister and brother and one that has occupied piper the majority rule of my attention squad by the right number one two three four the last five years to the memory. Monty Pythons Flying Circusat this time. ie From what I have seen personalisation is not working on a semantic level. So the "Football", "Manchester United" example is IMHO false. If you want to search for a football team with real history you will still have to search for "Liverpool FC". Google will not know that you are a Liverpool fan and return Liverpool results when you search for football. One day it might learn that Football is the same as Soccer.
There is however evidence that what you do in one set of terms and your long term behaviour will affect other searches you go to. Although I'm pretty sure that they will be using probability analysis to skew results I personally don't think that this will (at least at first) be all that sophisticated and will be driven by Google's true motives in making this change. ie to improve their ROI and screw a few extra dimes out of each user.
There is evidence that personalisation will return more Google owned sites if you show a preference for them. For example if your behaviour is to watch video answers to your queries you will get more Youtube etc. If the Googlemeisters can work out how to make money out of Youtube you might see even more of these results. Or perhaps they will buy Wikipedia.
If Google actually made organic results better by implementing personalised search this would give organic a boost over Adwords. Hands up anyone who thinks that the Google management would do this.
Best wishes
Sid
They've picked the right time for that one too, a busy Holiday season when more users come online to search for things they need to BUY(eg Adwords on left/over OLD and in some cases Useless SERP).
and stay there a while moving through a few pages will elevate that page
@sid - I dunno about that part. IMO Google isn't using no. pages viewed or time spent on site data - not unless their cookies are tracking this too.
Obviously Analytics does track this, but a sizeable % of sites don't have Google Analytics installed, so I doubt they'll be using the data the way you suggested.
Then again, I don't subscribe to the 'Google is evil' stuff that's knocking around either - I think they're genuinely trying to do what's best in their 'eyes', so I don't think this would stretch to being unfair on sites that don't subscribe to their analytics service
Obviously Analytics does track this, but a sizeable % of sites don't have Google Analytics installed, so I doubt they'll be using the data the way you suggested.
For the sake of argument let's assume Sid is right in his assumption. How would G' gather this data?
Not all websites use analytics. Not everyone has the google toolbar installed.
Google uses cookies to track clicks from and bounces back to the SERPs, but to my knowledge that's it...
so either Google won't be tracking views/clicks - Google will be using sample data based on analytics/toolbar users - or the missing link has yet to be identified.
not saying I wouldn't be surprised if they were doing it this way, just that I don't think they will be. I don't think they've got the data available to do this the way sid is suggesting, and although I know you shouldn't believe everything google say, on their blog post they say:
"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"
"Because I frequently click on www.cornellbigred.com, Google might show me this result first"
"customize search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity"
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I think it's all about how you interact with the Google search results rather than how you interact with any given website...
My main point is that this is not going to be as sophisticated as some people seem to think. If the last few years experience of Google is anything to go by it will be crude and directed towards achieving Google's motives rather than being there to improve the user experience. If they wanted to improve the user experience they would remove Adwords or give us a button "Opt out of sponsored results" and that isn't going to happen (full stop!)
Cheers
Sid
My main point is that this is not going to be as sophisticated as some people seem to think.
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28% of 4 million sites have Google Analytics. Millions have the Google Toolbar. If you've noticed, most of the free Google Tools innocently ask if you'll share data with Google. That's always set to default yes.
This massive data set allows Google to establish patterns and then place every user within those patterns.
This is easy to do. Look up "geodemographics". There are only 72 social types. Everyone in the USA falls into one of those categories. With only five items (sex, age, income, education, zip code), you can be categorized.
Google's goal is to deliver the best result for THE USER. Not for Google, not for the SEOer, not for the website. Users do not care if your site has great SEO, lousy SEO, or no SEO. Users want to see the best sites.
Personalized search results is a big step towards making much of SEO irrelevant. If your site is in the cluster of sites that are relevant to its geodemographic group, the site has a better chance of showing up. It won't show up for clusters that are not relevant. It'll get less traffic, but better traffic.
Google is focusing on the content and the user's intent. SEO's technical methods are becoming irrelevant.
What should a webmaster (SEOer) do? Identify your target audience. Understand what they are looking for. Build solutions to their needs. This is... marketing.
Google's goal is to deliver the best result for THE USER. Not for Google, not for the SEOer, not for the website.
Also, I hasten to add, however innocent Google's "good intentions" may seem to their defenders, the fact is, the road to hell has been paved thick & wide by others that have told us the same things. I'd like to say "we won't be fooled again", but in reality we will be, and they know it.
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Nothing could be further from the truth. SEO was relatively easy before. Any chucklehead could do it decently. SEO is much more critically important because new elements were thrown into the mix.
It's kind of mindboggling to see such comments. SEO is like a car mechanic doing a tuneup on an engine. Google just stuck a deelybopper and flux capacitor on the engine... and that makes the engine more complex and the role of the mechanic far more important.
The only thing I would add to your sentence Eurydice is in within the quotes : Google's goal is to deliver the best result for THE USER (and make a profit at the same time).
What I’m seeing in to many threads across the Internet is people assuming “a purity of purpose” on the part of Google. It’s almost if Google is an infallible diety with moral values that somehow supersede anybody else’s and it is magically transferred to the natural results. This concept is further enforced by people arguing that if Google weren’t “pure of purpose” the results would be junk. The fact is though the results change continuously and so what is good, better, or best, is indefinable. The exception is those sites that have conspicuously solidified results.
Bottom line is you have a site that only sells well six months a year and you want to alter that during the slow periods Google may sabotage even your best financial efforts especially in Adwords. Why because Google will always have the better data when all rules on privacy (secrecy) have been thrown out the window. Google’s data will likely verify your site only does well during the mentioned six months so why reward it with good rankings during the slow six months. Many people in these threads applaud that idea I don’t. I like to believe in some concept of “free will” and your ability to alter your final outcome or destiny. Schmidt and Google know that. To disarm you though Google spokespeople present fallacious arguments or misdirection with “if you're not doing anything wrong why should it bother you.” In other words you are evil to desire privacy or secrecy because there is only one definition of it. This is quite astounding rhetoric from a company that wrote the book on business privacy. And again people protect the diety because Google would only do this to protect themselves from all the evil hackers and spammers. Your own desire for privacy is therefore evil because you’re purely up to no good.
I’m not doing anything wrong. But in a broad sense I don’t want Google figuratively going through my dresser drawers to determine if I’ll need new socks at the end of April for their enrichment not mine.
Again though they’re never that smart and they only know what you tell them. Google has already gathered enough data that the opt-outs do them no harm. Google is good. They know what’s best for you. Google doesn’t like money.
"Personalized search results is a big step towards making much of SEO irrelevant."Nothing could be further from the truth. SEO was relatively easy before. Any chucklehead could do it decently. SEO is much more critically important because new elements were thrown into the mix.
Steve these comments are not aimed at you (quite the contrary) but what you said stimulated my brain.
I guess it depends what you mean by SEO. If you mean cheapo link building and so called SEO specialists stuffing keywords then yes they may become irrelevant. I wonder if there are folks here who have found one or two "tricks" that have given them a level of success who are now panicking because those "tricks" will not work.
In a way though nothing has changed you might have been able to trick Google in the past but you could never trick your visitors into thinking you had good content if it was a pile of poo and the same remains with personalisation. In fact good content and a site that encourages users to stay a while and return should now do better.
Having seen what I have seen so far I don't think this is anything to worry about for owners of good sites with good content. If you rely on trickery I'd find a new strategy quick.
Cheers
Sid
I see openings for many purpose led handheld devices to be created. Being better able to distiguish between products, information and advice allows developers to better target their market in the knowledge that the simplest software can now provide an accurate answer.
The user doesn't care about technical SEO. The user does not want to see the page with the most backlinks, the highest keyword density, etc. The user wants to see a page that answers her query.
The search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) are slowly moving towards that by using personalized results, quality rating, location-based results, and so on. These can't be manipulated directly by SEOers.
A successful SEO strategy is now mostly non-technical: good ol' marketing (target audience, messaging, UVP, USP), PR work (public relations, i.e., connections to major print media), quality content (professional writers), and so on.
good ol' marketing
I don't believe that ever did die except amongst those who thought, or hoped, that it would, probably amongst the younger ones during the dot com boom who believed they could do no wrong when loads of money was thrown at them.
We still use all the good ol' marketing techniques except the Net and our sites have become much more refined and focussed. Whereas at one time, especially during the 70s/80s and early 90s we had to attend as many as a dozen international exhibitions on several continents every year, these days we can leave it to a very select 3 at the maximum.
Our web site data, like Google's does to them, almost tells us which products are going to be required for up-and-coming projects when we suddenly have a flurry of requests for specific widgets. Sure, we see the requests but have no idea who is asking them until we are asked to tender, are we so far different from Google?
If you rely on trickery I'd find a new strategy quick.
Absolutely correct, all the answers to do it right are available free of charge here and I predict the same as steveb:
SEO is much more critically important because new elements were thrown into the mix.
Really competent SEOers could suddenly become a very valuable commodity.
Of course they can, and are, and have been.
You need a Google Account to use Web History...Web History uses the information described above to give you a more personalized search experience.
Nowhere does it say that they are doing personalised search even if you don't have a "Google Account". Nor does it tell you how to opt out as promised.
Google has posted a Youtube video which gives a little insight into how they say personalisation will work and explains some of what should be explained in the provacy policy.
[youtube.com...]
Cheers
Sid
[edited by: tedster at 9:25 am (utc) on Jan. 4, 2010]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]
"At Google we're just like a totally laid back bunch of duuuudes, maaan."
You can use the Google Dashboard to pause or disable Web History. Go to [google.com...] and sign in. Scroll to the bottom to see your Web History section. And then you might want to check into the privacy status of any other Google services you are using - also listed on that page.
Another way to access the same process begins when you are signed out. On the top, right, click on Search Settings (wait for it t fade in) and then again on the top, right click on Google Account Settings and sign in. There's also a link for Web History on that page - along with many other services you may be using.
I've had Web History disabled for a long time, and it has never reverted for me.
Case 1. This man owns one website, and uses Google once a day to check the rankings of his four most important keywords. But he always merely looks at the results and never clicks on anything. (He uses Bing for his personal searches.) Question: How, if at all, will his Personalized Google Results differ from Google's "regular" non-personalized results?
Case 2: This woman uses Google for all her searches, but never clicks on a video result. Question: Will her behavior cause videos to gradually disappear from her personalized results?
Any opinions on either case?
Case 2: This woman uses Google for all her searches, but never clicks on a video result. Question: Will her behavior cause videos to gradually disappear from her personalized results?
Sounds like me in that I've never clicked on a video result nor will I ever. I keep wishing they'd disappear but so far they haven't.
I see personalized results when I'm NOT signed in and regular results when I AM signed in
Google has made things quite complex in this area, and much of their online Help pages are now out of date, as Sid pointed out above. Do you have the Toolbar installed, with PR showing? If so that may also be part of the problem. I think the toolbar is a good habit to break.
When you're logged in, Google calls the data they collect "Web History". When you're logged out, your personalization is linked to a cookie. Google calls that "Search History". The previous terminology they used for getting clean results when logged out was "disable customizations" - but I can't find that resource any more.
But whatever the case for you, a three page difference is huge. You might be better off to stay logged in with Web History disabled until you get it all sorted. At least you know how to keep that personalization turned off!
What I do is use a dedicated browser just for Google Searches (and Bing, etc too). I treat it like a dedicated search application. It has no toolbars at all, and I dump cookies after each session. So far, it's working out.
But you're right on when you say "I NEED A PERMANENT SOLUTION". The whole world needs simplicity on this issue, whether they want to get personalized results or not. And so far, Google has not done the job well at all. There's not enough time in the day to spend a bunch of it playing with Google settings.
Use the cookie-less browser to check your untainted results.
It might be a good idea for us to all cooperate with comparative results over time. I don't mean specific results but just what differences you are seeing for (un-named) results in topic areas that you search for often in a personalised and an unpersonalised browser.
Cheers
Sid
Kiddies... you've subscribed to the koolaid. There's little you can do to find the truth since the google-aide is all you can see.
Bing it or Yahoo, ie. quit sipping the google-aide, to find out where you really rank. And none of us, on any platform, are going to be really happy. Just the way the world web searching facemybooktwit is going these days. But do remember: we are the content creators. And perhaps that might be the road to Tomorrow.
Sticking our heads in the sand is not the answer. The answer is to try and understand how this works in practice and use that knowledge to improve our results.
Traditional SEO on page and in link building coupled with good site structure and excellent content is going to continue to be vital to getting a high natural rank. If you don't get a high natural rank how can you benefit from personalisation other than by plain luck?
Cheers
Sid
As far as "from what I've read the #1-3 rankings do not change regardless of user/CPU or browser" - not true. And this is not news for me, this has been going on for months already. One of my clients comes up #1 for their main search term when they are logged in to Google and #2 when they are logged out. I always have to make sure they are logged out of their account before they check their rank in Google. I know it's been in effect since October, maybe even earlier.
This is about money - selling people's data, period. As far as privacy on the Internet is concerned, it doesn't exist. That ship sailed long ago.
