Personalized results is the art of returning a site in serps that a user is most likely to want to visit based on their browsing history and other factors. Are visitor metrics modifying personal search results even further?
Boy, this question is hard to word so read this scenario first please.
Scenario: 2 websites, both in same niche, both relatively equal in terms of backlinks, traffic and site quality.
If site A gets visitors who are enthusiasts of the subject and spend their time browsing related top quality forums and social groups on the subject while site B seems to pull in a lot of visitors who also happen to visit black hat forums and warez sites... is site A likely to see a ranking increase within personal searches?
Analytics shows up traffic numbers but nothing, that I am aware of, show you your visitors browsing habits so how does one gauge how much of an effect visitor browsing behavior has on your site?
To take the thought deeper, if your site is labeled a shopping site or such because of affiliate links but you steadily pull in traffic that doesn't convert how will this impact personalized search results?
It seems to me that, moving forward, it's not so much how much traffic you get but more who is visiting your site that matters. Without hard data on how well you're doing on that front where do you start to improve your personalized results?
