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.
