May 27, 2004
The Personalization of Search
So we know that Google isn't nearly as dominant as it once was. That Yahoo! has taken the first baby steps to be a real competitor. And that MSN is ramping up their own search technology. (Sidebar: Google is still providing search for the AOL Network as of this writing. I fully expect that this may change in the very near future, as soon as the contract is up. The AOL search traffic is likely going to end up going to the highest bidder.)
That's all just Marketshare stuff though. It's important, especially to the investors of the different companies, but it doesn't really tell us where search is headed. So what's the next big thing on the horizon?
What I have come to call the Personalization of Search, or POS in Randy-speak. This concept is going to be difficult for some to wrap their brain about, so let me try to explain it by example.
Let's say that in my searches a fair percentage of them are for information related to Apache web servers. Meaning, I'm not really looking for an e-commerce site to purchase something from. Instead I'm looking for reference material related to how to do this or that on Apache. Also, I'm certainly not looking for Apache Indian Artifacts to purchase because I'm a collector.
If the search engine issued me a cookie that contained an anonymous identifier, or better yet if they had profile information I have provided them (Yahoo! and MS could do this easily) they could track my searches, which results I clicked on, if I stayed on a site or came back to refine my search, etc.
Over time, the search engine could easily build a sort of Search Profile for me, with one of the things noted being that I used a lot of "Informational" type sites.
Now, let's say that I have a friend named Bob who is a collector of Indian Artifacts and is constantly looking for good deals to build up his Apache Artifacts collection.
Bob uses the same search engine I do, and many times our searches contain at least one word in common (Apache) even though we're looking for *totally* different things.
When the Personalization of Search becomes a reality, Bob and I will be able to conduct a search on the exact same or very similar phrases and get totally different results. Mine will be about Apache Servers; Bob's will be about Apache Artifacts.
If you take this one (rather smallish) example and apply it to every search by every searcher you'll begin to get an idea of the scale of the change POS is going to bring to Search, and specifically to Search Engine Marketing. In a nutshell, there will no longer be a #1 placement that is there across the board for all searchers using a certain phrase.
Instead, there will be one site that is #1 for a certain category of searcher and a totally different set of results for another category of searcher. As an SEM it is going to become more important than ever for you to "speak" to your target audience. If you don't, not only will you have difficulty getting listed in the search engines in the first place, you'll never stay in the top spots because the search engines will be able to sense (to some degree at least) if the average searcher was happy when they reached your site or not.
That sounds scary doesn't it?
What we're talking about here is the next generation of search engine technology. Instead of them taking a shotgun approach, they will attempt to become sharpshooters, picking off one target at a time instead of shooting in a general direction and hoping.
What does this mean as an SEM?
That if you've been trying to use some "formula" to obtain high rankings it is now time to stop and consider a new Customer Centric approach. Instead of building a site and then trying to tailor it to the type of people who visit it, you're going to need to understand who your target audience is from the very beginning.
Personally, I like the concept POS. But that's likely because I've always placed a lot more effort to building sites for Visitors vs building them for Search Engines. Many, many of the spammy sites that are out there with decent rankings right now will simply disappear from the SERPs over time. If everybody who clicks on a site immediately comes back for another try, that demographics can and probably will be factored into where it appears in the search results after a time.
When is POS going to be a reality?
It's hard to say. All of the majors are already working on it. They've also already been doing some limited tracking of their users for some time. If you don't believe me take a look at your cookies and you'll see at least one has been set for every major search engine, assuming you allow cookies to be set.
If I had to take a wild stab, I would guess that we'll see the first version of POS released by somebody before the year is out. I definitely expect to see all of the Big 3 have some sort of Personalization in effect by this time next year.
The smart search engine marketers are already considering the possibilities, and preparing for the change as well as they can. Those are the folks who will take the most advantage of the changes when they hit, so I would encourage you to start now.