Google Personalized Search
By Benj Arriola - Posted on Wed Feb 14, 2007One of the interesting discussions on the previous podcast of The Pulse hosted by Barry Schwartz with Chris Boggs, and Ben Pfeiffer were talking about the Google Personalized search results. So as you are logged into any of Google’s services, like the very common Gmail, and you do a search on Google, you may be seeing different search results than as you were logged in. Barry, Chris and Ben share their views on it, and based on Barry’s opinion, the SERPs are based on whatever behavior Google has gathered from your account but your behavior does not affect the ranking in general to the point that it will be an additional point in the general ranking algorithm. This is not a direct quote and this is just how I remember it while listening to the podcast while driving to work. Anyway, they have a complete story on it on the SERountable blog, that includes a screenshot as well of the difference in search results for the keyword: “seo” when logged in and logged out of Google.
Now assuming 2 websites having everything else equal and are both on the same page on the SERPs on page 1 and are right next to each other, when a certain person clicks always on the same one, over time will this mean when logged into a Google account, the site that he clicks on all the time will soon rank higher? I know there are a lot of factors that could be involved, but if this was the case and assuming everything else was equal, then what strategy do you need to get someone more hooked up to your page than the other? Perhaps better titles and meta descriptions that make the link more ideal to click? And maybe a better looking page and well written content so once people go to it, they are not hitting the back button and stays on your page. If this is the case, then I guess it is not really something to worry about since making good title, descriptions and having a better looking page and content is basic Internet marketing stuff anyway.
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