The end of search

Posted on 15. Feb, 2010 by Brian in search engine marketing strategies

The end of Internet Search as we know it

The days of “normalized” search results that everyone sees in the search engine results pages are over. Personalized search engine result pages are the “new norm,” and like climate change it is going to shift people’s perception of search in directions that may become as unpredictable as the weather.
With little fan fare at the beginning of December 2009 Google released what is called Personalized Search and like ships passing in the night most people did not pay much attention to it. Maybe Google wanted to it this way. Whatever the reason, we must take it very seriously and it deserves a lot more of attention then the press are giving it and here is the reason why;
Up to now, search engines have mostly delivered the same results to everyone if you were just using regular search queries and not actively using Google applications like Gmail, Picasa and many other apps offered by Google. Two people would enter the same keyword for “ Tiger Woods ” and get back the same search engine result page with the same set of results. In fact, there so much the same across the search engines that people have used them as their navigation tool of choice up to now.
In a personalized search environment Google is aware of your unique IP address, location and has created a personalized cookie that stays embedded in your browser when using Google applications to due searches. Over time Google uses this data in an anonymous way to refine the page results that are sent back to you in near real time.

Google cannot read our minds, but they can adapt to the keywords we are searching for when we make a query using what is now called “Web History”. If your political views are conservative you may not start to see conservative results coming back to you, but if you spend 180 days on conservative web sites Google will store that history on their servers and in turn you may see your personalized result pages take a more conservative flavour over this time period including all the ads in the sidebar for donations to your local politician.

Personalized Search may be a good thing for many of us. As our result pages will become more adaptive to our personal search habits and needs. My greatest concern is how Google is using this data to create highly targeted advertising that goes well beyond what we are used to seeing in our current modern day browsers. If you are a online business owner who spends a great deal of time monitoring and checking the results of your website while having Personalized Search and Web History active you maybe influencing you own results thinking that your site is doing better than you think. If you’re keyword is ranking in the top results for a term that’s important to you? Look again. Turn off personalized search, and you might discover that your top ranked term is due to the way your active personalized system is a adjusting itself to meet your needs. If you visit your own site too often, your own site ranks better in your own results — but not for everyone else.

How will Personalized Search affect Search Engine Optimization? Does this mean that Search Engine Optimization is finished? No, we have been aware for some time now that we are moving in the direction of personalization amongst the big search engines. As Google crops more data from us to personalize it to our needs. SEO will continue to be an important consideration to the search engines as long as we use good web standards, Meta Titles and Descriptions to make a good first impression to the people searching for our sites and robots that the search engines use to understand our relevant content in the search result pages.

We have moved from Global search, Country search, Regional search, Localized Search and down to what could be the holy grail of search “Personalized Search” or least that is what Google is hoping will all believe. A person who lives in Montreal may get a different result in the search engine when they due a search for “Bagels” then a searcher in Toronto who types in the same search query. Say you live on St-Viateur Street in the Mile End district of Montreal and you do a search for “Bagels” and the result that comes back is “Saint Viateur bagels”. I sincerely believe that this is what Google is hoping for with Personalized Search. Here is another example scenario;

Imagine you’re in a Grocery Store — you walk-up to the nearest clerk and ask where can I find the flour. The clerk would say on aisle 12 near the sugar. You would get to Aisle 12 near the sugar and find the flour you were looking for and thank the clerk for being as helpful as you leave the store.
But would you expect that same store clerk to help you by remembering everything you’d asked for over a half-year period? That might be helpful, sure, but it might also be spooky. But this is what Google is doing now. It remembers everything you’ve searched for over 180 days, and it uses that information to customize your results.

Google in their wisdom has offered us the ability to pause this service or opt-out completely if we deem it necessary. They have also given us the ability to edit our web history. I just wish Google could have given us a little more warning and made it easier for everyone to have a choice. Privacy advocates will not be happy by the fact that this is an opt-out feature rather than opt-in service. Google has addressed this by anonymizing search records to protect user privacy. Keep in mind that Google wants us to see diversity in the search results. It is still very important to Google to present a variety of sources and opinions in the Google results. As millions of Google users get automatically signed up for this service natural search rankings will become more and more distorted. The ultimate concern should be on how Google plans to monetize this new arrangement it has made with all of its application users. Google will only give us hints on what direction they will take next just like they gave us about Personalized Search back in December on a blog posting.

When you sign-up for the first time for a Gmail account you may not even notice the default opt-in option that Google has so kindly ticked off for you. Google will automatically sign you up for three distinct services;

• Web History
• Personalized Search
• Personalized home page

I just want to make you aware that I love Google applications in general and I use them every day in both my personal and professional life. I just believe that anything that is given to you for free comes at a price and Google should of done a better job at allowing it users to have the rights to make a informed decision to accept a service on their own terms.

Be cautious next time you opt-in to a service by taking the extra time to read all of the available information before clicking through. If this all sounds scary to you then you do have the right to opt-out by following the source link in this article. Google has clear instructions on their site on how to address this option should you want to exercise it.

Postscript:
Here is what you will see when you go to the web history page of Google.
Personalized Search
“When you search using Google, you get more relevant, useful search results, recommendations, and other personalized features. By personalizing your results, we hope to deliver you the most useful, relevant information on the Internet.

In the past, the only way to receive better results was to sign up for personalized search. Now, you can get customized results whenever you use Google. Depending upon whether or not you’re signed in to a Google Account when you search, the information we use for customizing your experience will be different:

Signed-in personalization: When you’re signed in, Google personalizes your search experience based on your Web History. If you don’t want to receive personalized results while you’re signed in, you can turn off Web History and remove it from your Google Account. You can also view and remove individual items from your Web History.

Signed-out customization: When you’re not signed in, Google customizes your search experience based on past search information linked to your browser, using a cookie. Google stores up to 180 days of signed-out search activity linked to your browser’s cookie, including queries and results you click.
Because many people might search from a single computer, the browser cookie may be associated with more than one person’s search activity. For this reason, we don’t provide a method for viewing this signed-out search activity. If you don’t want to receive customized results while you are signed out, you can turn off these search customizations.

Here’s an illustration of the information we use in each case:
Signed-in Personalized Search Signed-out Personalized Search
Where the data we use to customize is stored In Web History, linked to your Google Account On Google’s servers, linked to an anonymous browser cookie
How far back we use search history Indefinitely or until you remove it Up to 180 days
What searches are used to customize Only signed-in search activity, and only if you are signed up for Web History Only signed-out search activity

Some of the terminology that you might not be acquainted with;
Cookie
A “cookie” is a small file containing a string of characters that is sent to your computer when you visit a website. When you visit the website again, the cookie allows that site to recognize your browser. Cookies may store user preferences and other information. You can reset your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, some website features or services may not function properly without cookies.
IP address
Every computer connected to the Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet protocol (IP) address. Since these numbers are usually assigned in country-based blocks, an IP address can often be used to identify the country from which a computer is connecting to the Internet.”
Source: http://www.google.com/webhistory

Tags: search engine algorithms, search engines, user experience