The Coming “Personalized” Search Revolution

Nearly everyone involved in search optimization and marketing are becoming increasingly concerned over how personalized search is going to change SEO strategy and effectiveness. I think a big reason why such worry exists is because no one has a clear idea how this change will affect them. When users searching on the same term receive different results, what methods will we employ to maximize our search visibility?

But before we can begin to attack this problem, we have to understand exactly how search engines are going to implement personalization. At this point, it’s still unclear what form personalization is going to take, not only from the perspective of SEO guru’s trying to anticipate the next search engine changes, but from within search company’s themselves. The leader in personalization, Google, has just added web history to personalized search for Google account holders. What does this mean? Nothing right now, but it gives Google a data set to begin analyzing associations between search terms and actual user intent. How effectively Google can determine user intent will become the overriding factor that leads to the extent Google implements personalization.

Though its pretty difficult to see exactly how personalization will play out over the next few years, I think we can take a few guesses about how search will evolve. The picture that is slowly coming into focus points towards the development of a recommendation engine, rather than a pure search engine. It’s no coincidence that Google was in a heated battle with eBay over the purchase of social media site StumbleUpon. Google lost out and is now trying to add StumbleUpon-like features internally. Features that will link sites together through user click patterns rather than algorithm determinations. The strategies you already employ in your social networking campaigns are the same strategies that will make their way over to your future search engine campaigns. If you are not using, or at least paying attention to, social media sites, now is the time lest you find yourself behind the curve when these changes become widely woven into search engine algorithms.

Is it time to panic? I don’t think so. At least not as far as we can predict at this point. Instead of an earth shattering change that will require new SEO methods, I believe what we’re facing is simply a merging of search and social media into a single product. The methods we use now will continue to be effective, but we’ll use them in a more cohesive fashion than we’re currently doing. The key to succeeding in the future will not be through technique but through knowledge.

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