Personalized Search Now Default

SEO and Privacy forever changed

[incrediBILL]

Google Blog [googleblog.blogspot.com]

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.

[Kristos]

Our first Ugly Experience with google's personalized search
California client calls me - says, my site is now in the first few result for incredibly broad terms!
this is amazing
(not duplicated on my machine in AZ)
call his programmer in Indiana- He's getting the same great results for incredibly broad search terms.
call a friend who lives 5 miles away, not seeing it there.
has his son - right next to him in the office do a search - He does not see it either.
then he sees the problem.....

Search History
Your search results have been customized using search activity from this browser. Learn more <google URL>
Disable customizations based on search activity <google/history/optout>

disables it and see what everyone else sees
I told him, rejoice anyway, you've gotten $16K in orders today and the day is only half over!

[almighty monkey]

Ah, see, rookie mistake.

The correct response to 'I can't believe it, I'm number one!' is 'The invoice is now in the post'.

Followed by the cancellation of your phone numbers.

[Kristos]

Actually, although I despise this, it makes good sense for shopping. If I am a more regular shopper of buy dot com or tiger direct, it makes sense that I would want to see what my trusted vendors have first.
I think G has definitely gotten too big for their britches

[almighty monkey]

See, I quite like this functionality as a user. All search engine's collect this data anyway - We've known that forever. (There have been leaks for years, from several different search engines.)

The fact that Google are, in effect, saying 'Do you want us to use this Data in our results: Yes/No?' actaully means I trust them more for being up front about it, rather than less.

Google are a commerical enterprise. They aren't looking to set up a police state here. They are looking to flog us stuff. If the result of an algorithm picking through my emails saves me a few hundred quid over the year, I'm not too upset about that.

Frankly, all the data Google collect is also being collected by an ISP, and then some. If I ran a police state and was looking to abuse a few civil liberties, this is the data I'd go after, not Google's.

[Simsi]

And presumably its swings and roundabouts for webmasters anyway. Some go up, some go down. Better the content, the better chance you stand I guess. It makes it harder to track SEO efforts but SEO shouldn't be needed in Google's perfect world anyway. This is just another step in that direction IMO. Makes sense that "what people actually want" should rank higher than "what we webmasters want people to want" lol.