Yesterday in SearchEngineLand Nick Wilson wrote a post about 3 Ranking Survival Tips For Google's New Personalized Results making a big deal about Google's new Personalized Search Results that in play now for almost every searcher. According to Nick:
"…For the search marketing industry, it was cataclysmic. In short, it's a game changer. Those who adapt quickly or are already ahead of the curve will thrive in the new environment. Those too slow or in denial will perish.
"One page fits all" is now a thing of the past. Personalized search is now the default and none too easy to escape from either through opt-out. This means that every search result you click, every link you bookmark, every RSS feed you subscribe to using Google services can be used to improve your personal search results."
At this point, despite the "alarms" being raised by the article, the changes in ranking order are very slight - I'd be much more concerned if ranking changes were more radical (search results move more that 5 positions in one direction for the other for each person searching.
Here's a comparison between the top 10 search results for "house plans" in Google for my own account, logged out and logged in as someone else:
| Query: house Plans | not often used | ||
| Pos | My Profile | Not Logged in - Default | Someone else's Profile |
| 1 | houseplans.com/ | houseplans.com/ | houseplans.com/ |
| 2 | architectualdesigns.com/ | architectualdesigns.com/ | architectualdesigns.com/ |
| 3 | globalhouseplans.com/ | coolhouseplans.com/ | coolhouseplans.com/ |
| 4 | coolhouseplans.com/ | globalhouseplans.com/ | globalhouseplans.com/ |
| 5 | houseplanguys.com/ | houseplanguys.com/ | houseplanguys.com/ |
| 6 | dreamhomesource.com/ | ahmanndesign.com/ | ahmanndesign.com/ |
| 7 | ahmanndesign.com/ | dreamhomesource.com/ | dreamhomesource.com/ |
| 8 | theplancollection.com/ | allplans.com/ | allplans.com/ |
| 9 | allplans.com/ | theplancollection.com/ | theplancollection.com/ |
| 10 | eplans.com/ | eplans.com/ | eplans.com/ |
The changes, as you can see, are very slight.
I don't know about the rest of the article in Search Engine Land - maybe you need to do all those things suggested in the article, maybe not.
Personally, I'd like to see the search results change a lot more - then I'd know we've arrived in the new era of personalization….but these changes don't seem to be enough to get worked up about.
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