All this means is that not everyone's results will always be the same. So if you show up as No.1 when YOU search, you might not show up as No.1 when someone else searches... because of their history. So you need to do extra work to make sure that you show up as No.1 for as many people as possible. SEO will be more important (and complex) than ever. P.S. You shouldn't really ever rely just on one source of traffic (e.g. organic search)
This has already been implemented... Give it a shot and see what I mean here: Go to Google.com, search for anything you like. Once you have clicked the search button look up in the right hand corner. Click on Web history - On the next page you will have this Option - Your search results may be customized using search activity from this computer. - " Disable customizations based on search activity." or "Enable customizations based on search activity." So, unless everyone has this disabled, well then, too bad... Based on the websites they visit most, they will show up first, on the first page of Google. I actually tested it today and it is what it is.
Fear mongering at its finest. First of all, google is rather vague in its statement as to exactly what how it'll personalize results for the Google Search engine user. Secondly, there is no "hard" timetable for implementation. I'd recommend sticking with your time-tested SEO techniques for now until something is actually confirmed. This reminds me of all the people running around scared after the supposed FTC "crackdown" that would change the face of the internet. Yes, there have been some changes, but nothing earth-shattering/revolutionary like what these fear mongers were trying to make you believe.
Yeah i agree it looks like its gonna be harder for new emerging sites to gain traffic opposed to new sites which creates conflicts for seeing as how i been studying seo for the past month and when i create site for people will mean its harder for their sites to be recognized i hope not but it seems that way.
Google has been talking about (and experimenting with) personalized search for years - no need to worry too much. Just keep optimizing your sites. And never rely on one source for ALL your traffic!
This is only true for websites that the user frequently visits. If a user searches for a a term where they have never visited any sites, then the true rankings will still come up. SEO is the only way to get noticed by the mass population. Since everyone has different searching interests, saying that SEO is useless or dead is way off.
Thanks Sxperm for the great summary! I would kill myself if all my SEO effort will be wiped out in one day.
I don't think that will work well. I know too many people who tell me to find someting based on "it is the first result form google" or something like that. Also how would I find the same page if my history changes?
Google personal search has been out for quite a while but can be turned off in the browser/google settings to get the regular and non personalized search results again. I really don't believe google is gonna change that. It would limit search results only on personal search history which wouldn't be for too much of a benefit for google. E.g. if I searched recently several times for Orioles (the baseball team) and now all in a sudden I am interested in finding info about the bird Oriole then what google will present me for my search would be again and again are sites with info about the baseball team. This might be a very simple example but I'm sure you can widen this out. But wouldn't that be annoying for the user if he/she actually wants to find something totally different than what he/she got presented several times before, just because the search keyword is similar or even the same? Just my 2 cents Cheers verdecove
I wonder if Google was planning to do that to shake off social media sites. More people Facebooking means fewer people browsing Google. So change how they search on Google. I can definitely see the advertisers coming out the wood works.