What to Know About Google’s Personalized Search

 

If you’re like most people, you probably use Google to do the majority of your Internet browsing and searching. In times past, Google provided users with contextual based search results. Contextual search results take things like IP address, location, and language settings into account but that’s about as personal as it gets.

In recent times, Google started taking things like search history and account information into consideration when deciding which results to show. The algorithms used to do this continue to grow more complex with each day.

For example, rather than just listing websites based on the keywords a user types in, a personalized search would also take any information associated with the users account into play when generating results. This could be the difference between a user seeing search results for all art supply websites or seeing art supply websites that carry the brands the user had been previously researching.

 

As with most things, there’s a price to pay for convenience

Personalized search results allow users to weed out material that isn’t relevant but getting these personally tailored results significantly reduces privacy.

Additionally, personalized search results that omit things that are not relevant to the individual may lead to missing out on important information.

 

With these new personalized results, do rankings really matter?

Rankings are still a great way to keep an eye on search trends, but when push comes to shove where your website ranks in the search result does not hold as much weight as it once did. With personalized search results, people can target exactly what they are looking for without having to sift through a bunch of keyword-based results that do not target their specific needs.

 

If site ranking isn’t as significant, what can be done to stand out?

With personalized search, one way businesses are helping their websites to stand out is by taking the focus off of specific keywords and instead focusing on creating engaging and relevant content.

By taking the emphasis off of single keywords, content-focused websites combine many keywords to really engage the reader. This works directly with googles personalized search algorithm, and over time will allow your site to be associated with a multitude of keywords.

Ensure that your content is compatible with all types of devices. Optimizing your content to be easily viewed on devices such as tablets and phones will give you an advantage over competitors. Personalized search keeps track of the devices people use. By making your website compatible with all devices you are significantly increasing the amount of exposure that your site will receive!

 

Where is the future of Personalized Search Heading?

As personalized search technology continues to grow and cater to people on an individual level, businesses will likely have to follow suit and continue to develop and create new advertising strategies.

With all of this information taken into account, Google’s personalized search has the potential to make things easier not only for customers but for business as well once the initial learning curve is overcome.