The challenge is that as the popularity of personalization grows so will there likely be a diminishing effect on your ranking reports. In simple, it means that 4 people in the same household could all be taking turns using the very same computer and doing searches for the very same keyword phrase, and yet each person would typically see completely different results because of their personal use of the Internet and a growing history of different interests.
What this means is that you no longer can tell exactly what your ranking reports mean because where you rank for one person will not be the same as where you rank for the next person or the next. Thus ranking reports could very well become meaningless in time.
The search engines attempt to serve up even more relevant content to that individual based on their personal interests.
Obviously if you are interested in your own products and you own industry, you site may come up in the top results when you search.But what is the rest of the world seeing? With personalization growing in popularity, there is no way you can use the traditional methods to know.
Personalization of Search may bring a new dimension of satisfaction by providing the user with much more personalized results. After all, everyone wants the best search results. However, it is bound to pose a few challenges for those who have never thought out what is really happening and the far reaching impact that it will have with posing certain challenges with respect to traditional search engine marketing. As I mentioned in part 1, there are solutions. But we feel that it’s important to help SEO students grasp the implications of how much things could possibly be affected.
The challenge is that the ranking tools are not broken, but the search engines are not operating quite the way they use to. Some might say, “I just won’t turn personalization on.” That solves it!?
Not true.
Actually, if you have any free Google service such as Google’s Gmail or Google Analytics then Personalization IS turned on by default. The challenge is that Personalization of Search actually does work over a period of time and people seem to like it because it gives them results more personalized to their interest.
Personalization of search is described by distinguished IBM Engineer, Mike Moran as:?
“One of the biggest changes in the SEO industry since the introduction of PPC.”
If you understand the challenge, then what is the best solution??
Some say the solution is to watch your Analytic reports as opposed to rankings. Is the solution really to watch your Analytics reports??
That’s what some people will tell you. Actually your analytics will tell you that your business is slow. Analytics can tell you that your traffic is falling. Analytics can tell you that you that you have a definite problem.
Analytics can detect a downward trend or reflect the history of sales being lost. But no, watching analytic reports alone cannot ever tell you how to fix the problem.?
About John Alexander
John Alexander is Co-director of Training at Search Engine Workshops offering live, SEO Workshops with his partner SEO educator Robin Nobles. Check the upcoming seo skill building course agenda. Read a few SEO student success stories
