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.

[Hissingsid]

Here's what you should do. Use Google only once a day. Search for the term Bing . Go to the #1 ranked site in SERPS and use that to search all day.

This will ensure that if you ever accidentally use Google the data they have on you will tell them that you are looking for better results that have not been personalised.

Cheers

Sid

PS I did a rather nice logo with 2 toilet seats. Where do I submit this for consideration to Google?

[graeme_p]

Husky pup, exactly what I do: Firefox set to accept cookies (but not third part cookies) and delete them when I exit (at least once a day). Flash cookies regularly deleted manually (I am going to link the Flash cookie directory to /dev/null as someone suggested on another forum).

Opera accepts everything and is used for a handful of trusted sites.

[Future]

The decline and fall of Google....look out people, here comes BING.

even for my few sites banned in google, bing does not even gets 1% of total traffic till day..

I am sure, new kinds on block are ready to target bing ?
or bing originated sites.

Not commenting more.. ;)

[Future]

Bing definetly has a market to gain.
But.. for what ?

Mere on contradiction layed by a majority of webmasters on webmasterworld or a another hundreds of webmaster related sites ?

Its easy to target 1000+ sites in order to gain supremacy..
does the world ends here ?

[Staffa]

Firefox > Options > Privacy > Cookies > Exceptions > Block or Allow

Gorg and the likes of its ilk all Blocked, only a handful of sites Allowed permanently incl. WebmasterWorld all the rest > delete when browser closes. Equally all G related trackers on 3rd party sites blocked for quite some time now (OK, you can all frown at me now)

Coincidence or not search results are much better than they used to be over the past year or so. No more Results 1 - 10 of about 'several million' of which the first 3-4 or more pages are all junk but Results 1 - 10 of about of 'a few hundred thousand' with good results from page one.

[Prominentum]

Arguably, this has to be one of the longest ever threads I have ever seen on WW and also one of the most inconclusive ones. May I suggest the following take-aways from this intense and useful discussion?

1. For SEO's, SERP-1 (Positions 1-10) represent too much of a whirlwind of unpredictable results.

2. SEO's may instead focus on ranking high until Positions 11-20 for any of their organic campaigns. Any promotion of a url above Position-11 (i.e, to positions 1-10) would determined by a bundle of factors that are totally in the realm of individual surfing habits.

3. SEO's may suggest their customers to use virgin machines (where none of the google services are ever used) to discover true Google rankings of their websites. On the flip side, SEO's may carve such reports out of their own systems and share the same with customers in periodic performance reports.

What say?

[MHes]

My hunch is that Personalized Search is all about the ppc ads and not the organic listings. The organic listings will continue to need to be as fresh and relevant as Google can make them. This must continue to be their goal, although a little variation in the serps here and there is great for messing with webmasters minds!

Targeting ppc ads effectively is all about knowledge and this is probably what really interests Google. If they can get a better profile of the searcher, the odds of a ppc click is much better. If advertisers allow them some slack on where they can put their ppc ads, then google can really start to target ads in an intelligent way, rather than just the search phrase.

PS. I have only scan read this thread, apologies if the above has already been said!

[engine]

Whether you like what Google has done or not, one of the key factors that any SEO should have been working on for a long time is not a single minded focus on positioning, it's about targeted traffic and conversions.

[tangor]

Kiddies, I believe folks have missed the tree while gazing at the forest:

"Personalized Search" is "Behavioral Targeted Advertising" in a new set of clothes. Google did not want to face the same fight that Phrom and others have.

[Hissingsid]

it's about targeted traffic and conversions.

Adwords had for us gone way over what our conversion rate could sustain anyway even with some major #1 organic slots. We have therefore already been working of trying to improve our conversion rate by making sites more compelling, easier to get to the forms that convert and easier forms for users. We have for some time seen this as our biggest opportunity as our niche has become ever more competitive for position in organic and Adwords. Personalised search has confirmed this together with the need to cut Google out of our loop. Or at least finding other ways to grow traffic independent of both paid and organic listings on Google.

As well as making our sites more user friendly we are focusing getting users to return, retaining users when they are on a site, communicating with them off web. This is all stuff we should have been doing more of anyway it was just easier in the past to get traffic through SEO. Now that traffic is precious and we want to look after it well once we get it into somewhere that we control.

Cheers

Sid