The Maine SEO Blog

Thanks to Barry Schwartz and Keri Morgret from Search Engine Roundtable for taking the time to live blog many of the SMX West sessions!  Here are a few of my notes from Wednesday, Day 2…

Google’s SearchWiki, Customized, and Personal Search

(Archived version from SE Roundtable)
(Personalized and Customized Search from SMX East)

• For SearchWiki research, Google has actually gone into people’s homes to see what they’re searching for; not only on their computers but on notes around their computer!
• How Google thinks SearchWiki will help people:
  - Bookmarking
  - Improve specific name searches
  - Collect information for a task
  - Look at the RIGHT sites
  - Refinding hard-to-find info
• SearchWiki = explicit tool, Personalized Search = implicit tool (Google does work for user)
• Personalized Search: privacy-sensitive, transparent, show searcher is on and has ability to turn OFF
• Google Preferred Sites – add preferred sites with Google experiments (bases SERPS off of this)
• What does this mean for SEOs?
  Bad news:
  - Hard to collect metrics
  - See how page ranks
  Good news:
  - Easier for people to find you
  - Easier to retain customers who prefer your business
  - Top position no longer means winner takes all!
• From Google, how to deal with these new forms of search: “Make a good website.” (Ingenious.)
• To control personalized search
  - Use search details
  - Disable by appending &pws=0 in URL
  - Log out of your Google account
  - Look for extensions
• Google isn’t PRESENTLY using SearchWiki to change search results
• Not a large percentage of search results are personalized – most are simply due to geographic location
• Both SearchWiki and Personalized Search do NOT have a role with Ads
• There is still an opportunity for newcomers to be found: simply by making your site valuable to users and it will come up
• Get around localized results by changing location, specifying the location you’re looking for
• Right now, SearchWiki is meant for personal use
• Someone leaves a negative SearchWiki comment on your site? Give the comment a thumb’s down and/or flag as inappropriate – feedback is taken into consideration
• As soon as a comment is flagged as inappropriate, it is removed until reviewed
• Personalized results may even happen without your logging in (using IP address)

(more…)

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speaker: Bryan Horling, Group Product Manager, Google Inc.

• Web History – saves web history within google account
• Localization – Using the searcher’s geolocation to affect search, different levels of granularity, both explicit and implicit information
• Localization by: country, region, city
• Personalization – Using searcher’s personal context to rank results, recent search (short term), web history (long term)
• Universal search (mixed results) affected by localization
• Recent searches: Disambiguation (Example: search for “ethan allen” then “jordans” – Jordan’s furniture #1, 2; search for “jordans” – Air Jordan’s #1, 2)
• Web history: disambiguation – skew results based on history, website preference, refinding (shows visits)
• What’s this mean for SEM? Half empty: collecting metrics is difficult, seeing how your pages rank
• What’s this mean for SEM? Half full: easier for people looking for your service to find you, easier to retain customers who prefer your business
• What’s this mean for SEM? Top position is not winner-take-all, create compelling and interesting content, appeal to users, not search engines, you can control personalization for your searches (use search details, disable it by appending &pws=0 to searches, sign out, firefox extension: greasemonkey script, edit or turn off web history)

NOTE: These notes are the major points of the presentations, and do not include every point the presenter made.