Long time readers here will know that I’m not a big fan of Google’s personalized search. However late last week I watched a TED talk and had a zen moment of clarity, and finally got personalized search. More interestingly I got it within the first 2 minutes of the presentation (shown after the jimp)
The point is we come at it from a search marketers point of view, while it’s not the real goal, but making SEO harder, is a side benefit google is aware of, and as SEO’s it’s not something we’re going to like, at all. So why is Google doing it and what’s their benefit. Things like personalized search and google’s search wiki (which I am also not a fan of), represent Google’s point of differentiation or POD. There have been numerous tests that show with blind testing people don’t feel google’s results are significantly better. If that’s the case why does google have such a large market share compared to the other search engines? Google’s brand has a stronger level of trust in the consumers mind, and one of the things you do to build a brand is cultivate and nurture a POD. Building a POD should be something everyone understands and is doing, even if you are just an affilaite marketer.
What’s the takeaway and actionable items here:
- Start working on building your brand, Google signaled this last year.
- Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort circle, and read and learn new things, 80% of the blogs I read aren’t SEO related, and I learned more from Blogworld than any other conference last year.
- Google is the bigger force in our equation, you have to change to give google what it wants, not spend hours complaining about how unfair it is your old tricks don’t work anymore.
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Michael, I’m also not a huge fan of personalized search, but as you mention Google definitely has it’s reasons for building it out. I couldn’t agree with you more about the following:
* Start working on building your brand, Google signaled this last year.
* Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort circle
These points are particularly important for all search marketers to put into action.
You can’t change what happens, just how you react to it. The folks who complain waste too much valuable time and effort
yup… “journey in a thousand miles begin in a single step”
Thanks for sharing this Michael, it’s good to a see a post which really delves into personal search. As we all know it will almost certainly be a growth area for Google as advertising becomes far more personally focused and as SEO’s it’s going to become more difficult to optimise for the trend.
Exactly. I’ve recently watched the same talk and came to similar conclusions and was thinking to write about it. The personalized search first popped to my mind. But what I’ve gathered in terms of SEO is that we are optimizing for a keyword that relate to our target audience not the audience itself. This guy is showing another way of thinking about not only optimizing but thinking about the audience. Even taking the same product and making it perfect for a particular niche. The aspect of being real and fake by the end of the presentation is also very clear.
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