What You See is NOT What Your Customers Get: The impact of Google’s Personalized Search
As of December, 2009, Google has been personalizing your search results. Sites you like show up more frequently in your Google search results. Google figures that the sites you like are the sites you click on for search results or, if you have Google Toolbar, any of the sites you visit on your computer. Those sites will show up higher in future search results — for you.
Google thinks this will make you happier, as they say: “Today we’re helping people get better search results.” This is nice, but this means you aren’t seeing the same search results as everyone else. If you visit the NY Times a lot, Google will show you the NY Times more often, while Fox News fans will see Fox more often and more highly rated.
What Google personalized search means to the entrepreneur:
- Your site will appear to rank higher on Google results pages. But only on your computer. Because you click on your web site fairly often, your site will appear higher on search results for you. It may look like your site is rising in Google search results, but this could be your personalization in action!
- Your competitors may appear to rank higher on Google results pages. If you occasionally (or frequently) click on your competitor’s search listing or visit their web site, their site will appear higher than other sites. Again, these results will be customized for you.
- What you see is not what others get. Your results are personalized, so you are seeing your own reality. And your customers are seeing their own reality, thus…
- Your best customers will see you rank higher! Similarly, your competitors’ best customers will see their vendor, your competitors, rank higher.
What you can do about it, how to see the world they way it really is:
- To see what the new-to-you, blank-slate world sees, you will need to opt out of Google Web History so that your web activity does not skew (“personalize”) your search results.
- Just to be sure, you might want to install a variant browser on your computer and use that browser to check your search position. Don’t click on search results on that browser.
- Keep following Google’s search engine optimization best practices, including fresh, relevant content and quality link building!
Instructions for opting out of Google Web History, which personalizes your search results:
Opting out of Google Web History will make it so that Google doesn’t track your activity across computers and browsers.
Now, it depends on how you interpret Google’s online postings. It may be that Google will still personalize search for the browser on which you are working, based on the identifying cookie on the browser. It’s not clear if opting out of Web History and then signing into Google will result in NO personalization occurring in your search results. But Google does say that you can turn off personalized search by opting out of Web History.
Here’s how:
If you are signed in to Google, you’ll need to remove Web History from your Google Account. You can also choose to remove individual items. Note that removing this service deletes all your old searches from Web History.
If you are not signed in to a Google Account, your search experience will be customized based on past search information linked to a cookie on your browser. To disable history-based customizations, follow these steps:
- In the top right corner of the search results page, click Web History.
- On the resulting page, click Disable customizations.(Because this preference is stored in a cookie, it’ll affect anyone else who uses the same browser and computer as you).
Note: If you’ve disabled search customizations, you’ll need to disable it again after clearing your browser cookies; clearing your Google cookie turns on history-based customizations.
Some technical points about Google personalized search results
Google used to only personalize search for users who were signed-in to Google. Now they personalize based on the identifying cookie on the browser, and fine-tune when you are signed in to your Google Account. This means that they track based on search results you click on if and when you are not signed in to your Google Account.
For more info, visit Google
http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=54048
http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54067