A Guest Post on Personalised Search by Christopher Angus
Anyone thatâs been in any branch of internet marketing such as Search, SEO, Social Media Marketing and the like will fully understand what I mean when I say that Google is always changing. The animal we seek to master is impossible to tame, if merely for the fact that the algorithm behind the Google search engine is never really still. Stable, arguably so, but the fact remains that engineer upon engineer, programmer after programmer are spending their time constantly tweaking the code and structure of Google, often leading to unexpected twists in the SEO trail.
The point that Iâm getting at is that as a marketing expert, Search professional, or SEO company, one must be prepared to change with the times. Resistant to change some of us may well be, but change we must, if we are to survive. Of course, some changes are easier to accommodate for than others, some are small, some are large, the difficulty to change with the times sometimes â but not always â scales with the size of the change.
However, once in a while comes a change that is just incredibly awkward to deal with. A change that is so downright frustrating that it makes you wonder why you ever got into this business. A change like that has happened in recent days and continues to still happen. That change is typically referred to as âpersonalised searchâ, the process via which a Google search can become âpersonalisedâ or âuniqueâ for a given user, particularly when logged in to oneâs own Gmail/Google account.
It works by giving alarming priority to popular branded sites (presumably ones that Google thinks has a high amount of âtrustâ built up) and pushes these to the top of related search results, so you end up being more likely to find these branded sites in a better position than other, smaller, âless trustedâ websites. This also has a literal knock-on effect of pushing the websites that were previously ranking well for related keywords (the smaller sites) out of the way entirely, as theyâre moved to one side to make room for the âbig onesâ. From an SEO point of view, Iâm sure you can understand the frustration here.
The popular stuff is getting clicked on all the time, which then subsequently becomes personalised and then youâll continue to keep seeing those same websites every time you search for those related keywords. Search is rapidly becoming a popularity contest instead of a relativity contest, or at least whatever you want to call it: itâs not that anymore.
Another hurdle on the path to success @ Search has arisen and so we must deal with it, or it will deal with us.
How are YOU dealing with the idea of personalised search?
—–
Christopher Angus is a successful internet marketer and SEO, having been rated the 26th most influential marketer in the world in 2009. His company is Warlock Media and he can be reached via email at [email protected]
Thanks, Chris. I love learning about new tech … 🙂
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!