Expanded Google Personalized Search…What Does It Mean for SEO?

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On Friday Google announced they are going to, in their own words,

…help people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than forty languages. Now when you search using Google, we will be able to better provide you with the most relevant results possible.

This means that they are going to track the searching habits of people, even if they are not logged into a Google account. They will of course do this through a cookie placed in the browser of the searcher. Their stated goal is to give people the best search experience possible. That means, as in Personal Search now for logged in searchers, Google will keep track of sites you used after searching on Google and return them higher in the search results than they might normally be returned.

For example, if you searched for “How to tell if my transmission is going out” and decided to read an article on “HowStuffWorks.com” from the list of articles Google returns, Google will make a note of it. When you return to Google and search for “how to improve my wifi reception,” instead of the wikiHOW and Yahoo Answers articles on the top, they may return How Stuff Works’ article closer to the top. For a very detailed read on this, check out Search Engine World’s great post.

What does this mean for SEO? Below are a few of my thoughts…two of them are easy, but the last is complicated and open ended:

1. Be Careful When Doing a Quick Rank Check

For those of us who are constantly logged into Google for AdWords, Analytics, and/or Gmail, this is not a new problem. If you want to do a quick search to see where that page you’re worried about is ranking, you have to make sure you’re logged out or your search history may have an effect on the quick test.

But Google’s announcement makes this a bit more difficult. Now if you first log out and then do your search, that search?and any searches you do while logged are?are going to still be recorded and may impact future search results.

How To Get Around Personalized Search For Quick Rank Checks

There are a few easy ways:

1. Private Mode. I think this is the easiest route?use Incognito Browsing in Chrome or Private Browsing in Safari. Other browsers likely have this feature as well, but I use these two most often. Both of them stop web sites from placing cookies on your computer and what you do while in this mode are not added to the browsing history or the search history.
2. Use a Different Browser I keep a copy of Camino and Opera on my computer for such jobs. I know that I never log in to Google to do anything with these two browsers, so I have no problem clearing their cookies and browsing history.
3. Opt Out This seems the hardest way to go about it to me. Google lets you opt out of this feature whether you are logged in or not. If you’re logged in, do a search and click on Web History, then click on Pause or Remove Items in the left column. I am a bit weird in that I like to have this history. I like looking at it every now and then and it has saved my bacon more than once when I could find links I needed while on someone else’s computer. If you are not logged in, you can disable the Personalized Search feature by clicking on Web History and then click on Disable customizations based on search activity.

2. SEOs Will Have to Educate Their Clients About Personalized Search

I can hear the phone call now…at least this is one possible slant on the call, “You’re a genius! Two days ago we ranked seventh for roller skate keys in Tulsa, but I checked this morning and we’re #1!” If I haven’t let all my clients know about this change, they aren’t going to be pleased when I explain that because they continue to click on their own link, they have risen to the top only in their browser, they are going to be quite disappointed.

Of course the opposite call can happen just as easily, “Two weeks ago I ranked #2, but today I see I’m #6. Grrrrr…Yes, I did get a new laptop, why do you ask?”

3. The Harder Question?Expanded Personalized Search’s Impact on SEO

A good question to ask is, “Is there one search rank any longer?” I think the answer is clearly, there is not. It’s now possible that everyone will see different search results for the same search based on their location, their search history, their browsing history, and what blogs and web sites they follow in their Google Reader or iGoogle page. It no longer means as much to say, “We rank #1 for liver spot removal cream.” Gord Hotchkiss has some interesting thoughts on the topic, but I think he goes to far when he says,

The control of measuring progress by positions achieved will come to a crashing halt and with it, the SEO industry as we know it.

The SEO world will once again have to evolve, but it’s far from the end of the world as we know it. People often use search engines to search for topics they don’t know much about and haven’t read much about. That means, for example, if someone decides they want to talk to someone about SEO and do a search for SEO in Chicago, the search results are not likely to be personalized much since they probably don’t have a lot of history on the topic.

What it may mean, as I said above, is that large sites that have content on many subjects (think Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, About, wikiHow, How Stuff Works, etc) may see an even stronger presence at the top of search results. If a searcher tends to use Yahoo Answers a lot, whenever Yahoo Answers has a post regarding a search, that person is likely going to see that post toward the top.

But as Joe Lataro says in his interesting post about three SEO myths,

Natural search optimization is not dead, but is certainly harder. Successful Web sites with strong natural traffic know that optimization is a continual process. The best and most relevant Web sites should work their way to the top of the search result pages. These Web sites have fresh, valuable, keyword-rich content, good linking, internal optimization, value propositions for visitors, and good user experiences.

There’s no doubt that this will have an impact on some of the work that SEOs do?this is yet another step in the evolution of SEO, not the end of SEO. It’s going to be exciting to see how the evolution plays out.