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Google Personalized Search Results

Personalized search is not what you think it will be.

Google recently rolled out some changes to how personalized search will work. Many people believe that if you log out from Google OR turn off web history and search that you will be given “clean” results. This isn’t the case. I’ve done quite a bit of research within ShareFile for terms that we have been targeting and found that when I search for them within the office that I rank high for each and when I search from home, I am ranked a bit lower.

I have had numerous people do the same searches for me out of state and found that they each have different results. I have conducted the searches logged in and logged out, and even on different computers. I have had others within our office conduct the same searches and found that their results in the office often mimic mine, but differ outside of the office. The results even differ depending on the browser used.

While this does create a major headache when trying to check rankings for key terms I feel that the bigger issue is that when searching for general terms, I do not necessarily want to see the same site over and over. For example, I search for “hockey gloves” and click on a site. I go to the site and buy them. Now, the next time I need hockey gear, I will most likely search for the website name or just go directly to the website. If I do search for “hockey gloves” (or another similar term) again after visiting that site, it would be because the site did not give me what I needed or gave me bad service and I was looking for an alternative. I’d rather see a clean list of sites and not ones that I might have clicked on in the past. In my opinion, search engines are for discovery and comparison shopping while bookmarking sites are for repeat visits.

Just because you are logged out, does not mean that Google does not know who you are and where you have been. The influence of others in the same office and network is also something to watch closely. I’m not sure I like the idea of a “hive mind” within my search results.

For some data on personalized search visit HuoMah Seo Blog.

Photo Via: Wheatfields

  • Hi Dan,
    Great article. I read something similar just the other day in Website magazine. I agree I would not want to be directed to the same sites over and over. I would want new sites.

    Thanks for sharing.
  • Dan
    Thanks for the comments!
  • Interesting thoughts Phil and JP! Dan, thanks for getting the conversation going... it's going to be increasingly important for demonstrating the value of SEO in the personal/localized era!

    For more "neutral" results I use a proxy for searching Google:
    http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

    I'm not sure what datacenter they're hitting there though...

    >> I'd love to find a tool that enables you to pick a location and then see the approximate google results based on a zipcode or address or something.

    ie:
    1) add zipcode
    2) add keyword
    3) search and see what results look like in that area.

    >> One way Ben and I have been developing an overall presence metric is through a url and hostname's occurrence frequency in the SERPs. We use it for link building, but it's useful for broad-stroke impressions of a keyword space:
    http://searchengineland.com/the-link-builders-g...
  • I've been noticing that a lot too. Just the other day when I was discussing ranking a recent ranking report to a client, the position of one of his secondary keywords was tracked at #16, when he searched for that result, it came up as #21.

    I explained to him about "logging in to his account", "data centers" and personalized results, but in the end, he was more concerned about where he was ranking. I think there are two perceptions that need to be communicated by SEO types.

    1: The SERPs are not static, not anywhere, not any time. They change and they change frequently. I've seen first page results drop to 2nd page results overnight. I think that we need to do a better job communicating to people that this is the case with Google... the point is not sticking your keyword to the wall for all eternity, but having the relevance and authority on the site and on the pages that put your site there more often than not... then again, I dont know if this is the easy way out or not.

    2: Based on some of the conversations you and I have had in the past, as well as subsequent conversations, I think position should become less of a factor in SEO. Position is great, but it's ephemeral and temporary. What should become more important is the presence of keywords. This way, when one drops, because you have a strong presence, other keywords can make up the slack.

    With this, the emphasis is on user and keyword focused strategies and not just optimization alone.
  • Dan, stop trying to think for yourself, Google will take care of that for you!

    I hadn't heard of the hive mentality, but I guess where an office pushed through a single IP there's a real chance of that happening.

    I'll be interested to see the data on that as time goes by
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