Google's Universal Personalized Search - Don't Sweat it!

Google announced in a blog post recently that they have opened up their personalized search abilities to everyone. Previously, personalized search only affected users who were signed in to their Gmail or other Google properties. If you we’re signed into Google you would see your email address in the upper right corner. Well, now you know longer need to be signed in.

What the Heck Is Personalized Search?

It means that your search engine results are being modified based on your past history of searching. This is the search engines way of trying to deliver the most relevant results to you…

Example: Two people search on the word ”Beetle”, one gets car results, and the other results for a bug or as another example a search for “apple” could yield results for a fruit or a computer

What’s the Bottom Line?

Purely from an SEO standpoint the bottom line is the listings that get the “clicks” will get the BETTER visibility. If a job seeker searches for jobs and almost always clicks on a result from Indeed, Indeed will be deemed more relevant than monster or other (as an example) for that particular user.

It also means that those who may have achieved decent SEO visibility from having a few keywords in place & a trusted domain are going to have to go back and consider a site stickiness and usability strategy.

Having a “sticky” site just means that people are coming to your site, finding it interesting enough to stick around as well as come back for more – this is accomplished with having a great content & interactive strategy. Not only will you need to have information around benefits, culture and what it’s like to work at your organization but you’ll need to incorporate videos, blogs, Flickr, social media and more! It also means paying more attention to a user’s experience.

In reality though, if you are paying for SEO services and are working with a vendor who knows what they’re doing all of the above elements would have already been part of your SEO strategy or at the very least recommended to you.

My advice – don’t worry about it. Work on creating the best site possible. What’s good for users is good for search engines.

Check out Google’s help center for more details on personalized search, how they customize results and how you can turn off personalization. Alternatively, you can learn more by watching the below video.