We all knew it was coming. Now it’s one step closer:
The Personalized Search Result Revolution
For some further background you could read the facts-type post at Search Engine Land or the more editorialized post by SEO Graywolf. Ekstreme has another good post about it.
But FIRST, read this…
Google has announced that search history and search personalization are now automatically turned on whenever someone signs into their account on a Google service like Analytics, Gmail or Webmaster Tools.
You can turn it off by signing out of your account, so it’s not like this will keep you from seeing how you rank “truly” on the organic SERPS. But what it DOES do is vastly increase the amount of people out there (how many ‘regular’ non-seo people have Gmail accounts and stay logged in all the time? Lots!) who are seeing personalized searches. This could include your clients, but it would probably make them see their own site higher so…
Next frontier of SEO?
There is a reason folks from Google and Yahoo have been known to quote passages from This Book. Presuming then that Google uses the aggregate data to influence organic results for everyone (they may not be now, but it is coming) we can expect to see tactics such as:
Whitehat: Encouraging your loyal users (perhaps those who subscribe to your newsletter or feed?) to sign up for a Google account because you know they will be visiting your pages and thus telling Google that you are relevant to them through the search history tool.
Grayhat: Setting up multiple Google accounts and signing in from different IP addresses, searching for your keywords and clicking on your listing (even if you have to dig 40 pages deep), thus telling Google that your website is relevant to that keyword search. Other forms might include clubs where a group of SEOs agree to search Google while signed in and click on each other’s results for certain keywords.
Blackhat: In the same way that affiliate parasites trick people into paying their commissions by popping up a window and overwriting their cookies, some clever blackhats are likely to use similar tactics to trick Gmail users into searching Google for a term and clicking on a listing. It could occur so quickly that the user wouldn’t even know it happened. All they know is there is a new pop-up or pop-under window, not that they went through a Google SERP to get there.
MarketingHat: Trust me, you will be seeing A LOT MORE commercials that tell you to “Google” this or that and click on the link to their website.
Can anyone else think of ways to abuse this system? Maybe if we get enough of them here Google will realize what a stupid mistake this is. And, if not, at least we’ll be set to benefit from it. 
{ 5 comments }
Sure… You can pay people to place your website in an i-frame or hidden frame of some kind on their website. You can hack into someone’s computer and have a robot surf targeted websites while the victim sleeps.
Maybe in some of the bigger cities but not where I live. I doubt the blue hairs (old people) will know how to use or recognize local search.
Ken, this has nothing to do with local search. Am I missing something?
The interesting thing is that Google is, first and foremost, a government, and the owners are, truly, rulers of the world through this incredible government they’ve created.
The question is, in my mind, how long before these people cross over into the bizarre realm of dictatorship? Or, is it possible that the personalized search is a first form of dictatorship?
I don’t want Google deciding for me what to I want to see in the organic search results! It’s too much like me giving them permission to control the media. And once the government controls the media, freedom goes down the tubes.
So, I believe that one tactic not previously mentioned is to go to a different search engine. Google defines the SEO world only as much as we allow Google to define it. Or, is that too idealistic?
I don’t doubt there are many ways the blackhat crowd will begin to take advantage of all of this. Still, it seems like a healthy first step towards search returns that have to do with what users want rather than marketers.
After all, I doubt a Super Bowl ad that says, “Add us to your Google homepage!” would get as many links to it as a video that everyone seems to really want to see.
Maybe I’ve just drank too much of the Google Kool-Aid. But to my way of thinking, this will make it harder for spammers to beat the system, not easier.
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