Personalised Search – The Death of SEO?
Posted by: Tom Collinson On Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 - SEO
An article from WebProNews sent around the office this morning sparked an interesting discussion regarding Google’s Experiment in personalized search. The author, Doug Caverly quite rightly points out that at the moment personalized search is limited to logged in users but it’s not expected to stay that way for long.
In an interview with WebProNews Bruce Clay suggested web wide personalised search could be with us in the first quarter of 2009, regardless of whether you’re logged in or not.
So what’s the big deal, it sounds useful for a user but how does it affect us as online marketers?
Well in short SEO is dead or at least close to it. If two users search using exactly the same query and get different results based on their behaviour in the past (which will happen) how can you check search term rankings and improve results ranking?
Those of us that deal in SEO are going to have to revaluate how we apply our trade. Ranking, the very thing we aim to improve will mean nothing; if a website that was below you in the past is more relevant to an individual, even if you have ten times more back links, it will appear higher. Instead success metrics will revolve around conversions and traffic levels.
It’s not all doom and gloom however, if results start becoming personalised and relevant to the user, the traffic we receive should be targeted and result in higher conversion levels (note the word should).
Behavioural based results is some thing all of us in Online Marketing need to keep an eye on, if it goes as we think, it’s going to be a tough transition, but ultimately we have no choice. Keep your head up; improved organic targeting would be a fair trade for the diminished importance of SEO and it’s a real possibility.
If personalized search requires added time by the searcher to “set-up” their search, it’s not going to be a problem at all. The beauty of Google is fast results with only a few clicks of the mouse. Add more steps, you’ll have more people go elsewhere.
The idea is in future you won’t need to “set-up” your search, it will change dependent on how you browse. I think a better term might be ‘Behavioral Search’.
Thanks for the comment!
If personalised search is activated, adsense will also die in short time.
I think PPC will be affected but paid search is the bread and butter of companies like Google, MSN and Yahoo – to introduce features that would compromise this would be suicide.
It won’t die but it may change gradually over time.