What to do when Google Gets Personal…

Posted by Laura Bergells

March 14, 2007

A prospect calls to tell me that his site is doing great for a particular search term. He brags that he has consistently been number 3 in the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Position) at Google for a for a few months.

His problem? He says he is not getting much traffic for his extremely popular term.

So I type in his search term at Google, and… nothing. I go to page 3, 4, 5…still nothing!

“You are not number 3 for me,” I tell him. “Are you signed in to Google? Because that would make a difference…”

“What do you mean ’signed in’?” he asks. “And how would that make a difference in my search ranking at Google?”

I tell him it makes a huge difference. Google is ramping up personalized search in a big way. Personalized search means that Google is learning how YOU search, personally. Therefore, what you see on your screen when you search at Google can differ from what your customers see when they search.

How Personalized Search Works:

All a computer user needs is one Google account. So pick a Google account — any account — Gmail, Writely, Blogger, Adsense, Adwords, or any of the other dozens of popular Google programs. You probably have at least one!

When you are signed into one of these accounts, you likely have personalized search activated on your computer.

Now, go to Google’s home page. If you are not signed in to one of these accounts, here is what you will see:

Google Sign In

But when I sign into Writely and go to the Google homepage, here is what I see:

If I search while I am signed in — and I have personalized search active — Google starts learning what kinds of links I am most likely to click upon. With personalized search, Google starts making search more relevant for me, personally. (And by default, anybody who has a Google account has personalized search turned on.)

Most of us will bookmark, subscribe, or click upon our own sites. So when you are signed in, Google will learn what you like, and push your site to the top.

That’s what happened to my prospect. When my prospect signed off Google, he saw what everyone else saw when they aren’t signed in. He was nowhere — which explained why he wasn’t getting any Google traffic other than his own!

With personalized search, the days where people are not signed in are numbered. Personalized search delivers search results that are more valuable and relevant for each individual.

And while this is great for searchers, personalized search has quite a few businesses panicking. Here’s the (paraphrased) question my prospect (and even one customer!) asked me:

“So why even bother with search engine marketing if the same query is going to serve different results for everybody?”

The problem with that question is that it reveals a mindset of “search engine marketing as a slick way of fooling the search engines into putting my site towards the top.”

Search engine marketing has nothing to do with tricking the search engines! Essentially, search engine marketing is all about consistently performing three online marketing functions:

developing great written content for your site,
organizing your content and code cleanly and competently,
making your site and content so attractive that a) other sites cannot help but link into it as a valuable resource for their own audiences and b) people can’t stop talking about it and c) visitors keep coming back again and again….

When you consistently apply these three marketing functions, your site tends to get great SERPs. Providing valuable, well-organized, updated information is not slick-trickery — it’s good business!

That said, I like the idea of personal search. As a searcher, I want more relevant results. And I hope that personalized search will get online businesses focused on providing, organizing, and continually updating great written content at their sites.

And as an online marketing writer, I like personalized search because it means that written content is more valuable than ever. This means I will be more in demand that ever!

Seriously, not only is the written content you see on the page more important, but strong headline writing for search liners will encourage increased click-through. And of course, your web site will need more fresh content, too. The days of static, brochure/billboard websites are officially over.

Also, I mentioned last month that if you don’t RSS now, you will hate yourself later! Continually adding content and providing subscription feeds through RSS will give you more visibility in the personalized search era. Fresh content keeps people coming back to your site — and an RSS feed with an “add to Google” reader, homepage, or bookmark will also help people find you. Plus, the more individuals who use their Google services to bookmark or subscribe to your feeds — the better you will do at the search engines.

How to Thrive in the Era of Personalized Search:

In brief, if you want to do well with search engines in the era of personalized search, here’s what to do:

Provide lots of fabulous, highly niched written continent at your site.
Organize it cleanly and competently.
Update your site with fresh content frequently, and let others know about it.
Provide easy methods for people to bookmark and subscribe to your site.

If that doesn’t sound all that different from what you’ve been doing all along, you’re in good shape. Don’t let the addition of adding an RSS feed throw you. An easy-to-implement blog platform and strategy can help you perform all of these functions with relative ease!