Google have recently announced that they have recently changed the way that personalised search works.
Previously you had to be logged into your Google account for this to work. Personalised search will now be available to people based on 180 days of search activity linked to an ‘anonymous’ cookie in your browser.
Find more details about personalised search HERE.
And if you want to turn off personalisation in your Google search results you can find out how HERE.
If you are an expert on search engine optimisation what are your thoughts on how this will impact search results and what challenges that brings those of us who want to appear higher in the search engines?
Posted via web from Krishna De: Insights From Ireland On Digital Marketing, Social Media And Entrepreneurship
December 8th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Hi Krishna,
Great post. I’ve been wondering about how Google will roll this out and how much of an effect it will have. It sounds like a fairly drastic change but I think the initial effect may be quite small. Some SEO’s are already jumping up about an unfair disadvantage for new sites but in reality they are typically disadvantaged anyway – ask any business person who’s ventured online for the first time. It may in fact be advantageous to them if sites with more authority are suddenly displaced by your own personalisations.
A lot of people I’ve spoken to (and I share this) can’t see how it will benefit them – particularly in this case: What if I search for “hotels in Dublin” – and then I’m unhappy with a hotel – or I don’t select one – then in a few months will I not get the same results? How will I connect with that hotel or what if I want to give them another try….
I almost never use personal search and what we find a lot of is this: Many people who don’t know what personalised search is, often think that their site is much higher up in Google than it really is. Think about all the “Google It” campaigns that could now fail.
If I was sceptical, I might suggest that Google are really working hard at making money from AdWords, which will no doubt continue to be ubiquitous
December 10th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I agree — thanks for sharing!
One thing that the video doesn’t mention is that people who delete all cookies whenever ending a browser session will then have no cookies tracking them.
And of course most browsers let you delete cookies manually, too.
I find Firefox to be easier WRT management of cookies than Internet Explorer. I don’t use Google Chrome, because Google tracks EVERYTHING and I really don’t like the idea of that.
I do not rely very much on Google very much for search results — the quality simply isn’t good enough, so none of this really affects me. Perhaps Google may at some point sell statistics they gather on people? (BTW: the last session at the LeWeb conference [the "Gillmor Gang"] included some heated debate about issues closely related to this).