expertSEM

By now, you may have heard. Google is personalizing everyone’s search results. *GASP* Even if you are not logged in! For the average user this might prove useful. Who wouldn’t want to see sites they like at the top of search results? On the flip side, though, search results may start to look very similar despite what users search for.

Search Engine Land did a great piece on the new Google search results including how to disable these customizations. As an SEO Management company, we are not running around crazy screaming at Google just yet. To fully understand what this means for our clients, we are going to be paying close attention to our analytics data.  Is traffic decreasing? Are we seeing less conversions?

We are also going to spend time educating our clients on why it is important to disable personal customizations. If they are continuously searching around their terms and clicking on their links, obviously their results are going to start looking very good. The bad news? The same will also happen with their competitors.

Only time can tell the true impact of Big G’s decision. Unfortunately this feature comes standard and it is up to individual users to disable. The majority of internet users will never know this feature exists, let alone that it can be turned off. Is this the demise of SEO? Not at all – but it is going to make our work much more difficult.

As we learn more about the impact of personalized search results, we will post. So stay tuned…