Personalized search is gaining effect
Untill now personalized search results where hard to unravel. The effect was minimal (in most cases) and we had only one identity to test with. But personalized search is gaining effect and for Google the results look promising enough to continue with further personalization. So what does this mean for search engine optimization? This article will shed a light on what is known about the personalized search algorithm and how it effects peoples behavior.
How important is personalized search?
Google (and other search engines) want to give the most relevant search results. Knowing who is requesting the information with what intent is extremely important for this search relevance. If I search for “apache”, I might be looking for the Linux webserver; If my neighbor looks for it, he probably wants the helicopter gunship. So how does a search engine discover: a. the meaning of a word and b. the intention of the searcher?
The meaning of a word
Google doesn’t use a dictionary to find related words (only in a very small way), it uses other occurrances of the search term on other websites to find them. For normal ranking or when a single word can have several meanings (hononyms), these related words become extremely important for the search relevance.
If a large group of apache websites also mention something about webservers, PHP and Linux. Apache must be related to those terms and those websites must be about the same meaning of that word. If another group of sites mention nothing about webservers, but keep writing about geronimo, tipis, crazy horse and tribes, they are probably refering to indians.
Being related
The “occurrances of the search term on other websites” part is becoming extremely important in personalized search. Optimizing your relevance has to do with mentioning the same related words as other websites within your niche. Links to and from your website should contain those same related words. This relates you to your niche and that meaning of a hononym you might want to rank for.
Personalized search testing
After using different identities with a separate search history and behavior, the search results for several hononyms gave a very clear picture of how small changes in your behaviour can have a profound effect on the search results. And the same tests over time, gave us the impression that Google is increasing the importance of personalyzed search. Adding &pws=0 to the search result URL shows you the difference between your personalized results and normal ones.
Besides hononyms we’ve also seen very distinct search results for subniches of a topic. While only using a more generic term for a niche, websites that used related words that coincided with the subniche preference of the searcher where given more weight. So every search is influenced by personalized search in some way.
Intention of the searcher
So how does a search engine find out the user preference for a specific subniche or hononym of a search term? Mainly by looking at your recent searches and things you’ve clicked!
Let’s say you’ve searched for “apache” and after seeing pages full of server results, you re-specified your search to “AH 64 apache” and clicked a helicopter link. The next time you search for “comanche”, search results about the RAH 66 comanche helicopter are given extra weight. In this case some results about the comanche tribe still outrank the helicopter, but suddenly more helicopter links enter the top 100.
SEO for relevance
To become more relevant, you need to find out what you want to be relevant for. Define what audience you want to target and what they define as relevant. If they use terms like AH 64 and technical terms for weaponry, they might be a different audience than the ones using “apache squadron iraq” although they both mean the same helicopter.
Broader ranking is still possible, you will just need more superiority over the closer niche matches. Define the niche and then define the search terms. The exacter the niche, the better your focus and the easier it is to rank (link relevance).
Find out what the most visited (high Google ranking) websites in that niche are and look at the related words they use. Use the same related keywords in both your content, anchor texts to your websites and link to pages in that same niche.
SEO for personalization
SEO shouldn’t be about large amounts of traffic, but about converting visitors to a predefined goal (like “more sales”). Personalization should help you achieve that goal more easily, but you might want to rule more than just your niche. Any traffic is valuable as long as only one visitor converts. Getting people earlier in their decision process, before they know exactly what they are looking for, is becoming even more important with personalized search.
The websites found early in a search process define what more specific search queries someone will be using and they define what Google sees as personal related keywords that need to be given more weight. Therefore top rankers for more generic search terms define the keywords you need to incoorporate. The ones that are the most likely to be “clicked” are more important. The “Searches related to:” tab that is shown at the bottom of some search results helps you to find the terms that are mainly used for further specification.
Conclusion
So far personalized results mean: You have to already rank for a search term the old way, but extra weight is given to specific niche keyword relevance. This niche is mainly defined by search behavior, but the future it may include more personal information to be used.
For SEO’s this means they will have to use better subtopic specifications based on possible preferences and search history. Making a separate page for every subtopic, but mainly focussing on the same search term, might be a good solution if you aim for large amounts of traffic. For spammers it means they should use smarter scraping and text generation software. Personalization is here to stay!
December 6th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
im allready starting with targeting subtopic specifications, because i know wath my visitors are looking for so i can specify all those subtopics :)
regards,
Michelle
January 16th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Thanks for the tip!
When do you think public profiles will be added as a verticle?
March 7th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Google definitely needs to work harder on its algorithm for displaying SERPs. I think it might soon be replaced by a human-edited search engine though. Kinda like DMOZ.