Loading ...In the Top-Shelf Organic SEO session at PubCon 2008, Bruce Clay made some very significant predictions regarding SEO. As we all know, SEO has advanced in many areas over the past several years. Compare your current searches to that of just 2 years ago. Quite a bit of difference in the results, huh?
In the above WPN video, Bruce Clay predicts even greater changes in the coming year. Personalized search, behavior-based search, intent-based search, and universal search allow for direct and specific searches. With so many ways to search now, it’s quite obvious that search results are getting better, which is exactly what Google wants.
While this is all good news for searchers and Googlers, SEO’s have a bit of a challenge on their hands. Bruce states that “ranking is dead” since people can have different results even when using the same search query. He uses the example that the search query “Java” can bring results for code, coffee, or the Caribbean.
Instead of focusing on ranking, Bruce recommends SEO’s to look at analytics and measure traffic, bounce rate, and action closely. Also, among his advice is the idea to embrace these implementations such as video, images, audio, maps, etc. Not only will this help to engage your customer, but also Google.
OK so what happens when we have 3-4 people using the same computer in one household. This is the case for most of the US. Would this type of personalization make sense? Sure on a regional level, but not on a intent level.
I agree with Jaan.
If I’m a Java Programmer and I usually search for programming info, does that really mean that I have no interest in other uses for the term Java?
Well, no but if you predominantly search for programming related JAVA, I think Google will make an effort to bias your results towards that type of java. This is essentially a question I put to Matt Cutts in a video we shot shortly after Bruce’s interview (it should be up this afternoon sometime).
Personally, I believe Google thinks 2 things in this regard.
1: They feel confident enough to bias your results and deliver results on what they feel is your ‘intent’ of your search based on things like geography and passed query patterns and what you have clicked out of those patterns. When you searched for JAVA (or things they designate as ‘related to’ java, what did you choose? Did you bounce back to the SERPs (they watch for that you know) or did you stick with the SERP you clicked on?
So they feel like they can create a decent profile of your tendencies and habits – enough to skew your results – based on previous queries and other available data.
2: I am even more sure that they strongly feel that this business of interpreting your intent and serving these personalized results will also enhance the efficacy of their paid ads.
Interesting Video – IMO quality content will always win.
Regarding biased/localized search results – use long tail search phrases – such phrases *should* always provide the *best* results; the SEs can’t afford to ignore that level of query; if they do then users will simply use a *reliable* (i.e. un-biased) SE…
Dale
I assume this won’t work at all for those of us like myself who have ip’s that indicate I am in Los Angeles, when in fact I am in Sacramento.
Mike, very informative interview. Personalized search … how the hell to I prepare for that??? I guess we’ll all be in the dark until it rolls out and the effects can actually be tested.
Joe, I’ve already seen effects of it. I searched for xbox 360 games while I was logged into google in firefox. Then, I opened Internet Explorer where I wasn’t signed into google, did the same search. Different results, tho not vastly different. Mostly the results were arranged differently in the top 10 with a couple of inclusions/exclusions.
I don’t see any reason for Google to adapt natural results regarding user’s profile…
The main reason is, any new user profile information should be helpful to deliver clever contextual paid links (and improve relevancy + cash)…
My 2 pcs…
I may be stating the obvious here but I think Roger’s observations regarding personalised search, and my own, dispell Bruce’s statement that “ranking is dead”. If you don’t rank then you’re not going to appear in anyone’s personalised search! SEO controversy = link bait, or am I just an old cynic ?
Well Al, I’d submit that the results you and Roger are talking about are nothing like what you can expect after the first of the year. Roger’s comparison was just logged in to google and not logged into google, that has been around for a while. In the near future your login status at google isn’t going to mean much in terms of your serp positioning.
Like Bruce said in the interview, after the infamous Tampa Update a couple of years ago, I think Google knows better than to make huge huge shuffles to the index right at the onset of the holiday retail peak. They caught a lot of negative publicity over that.
I’d like to see what you guys find in your serps come March. Based on the things Matt said in this video when i asked him about the subject, I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the concept as overblown or linkbait
Please note that Bruce had only consumed half of his Hofbräu beer. Perhaps another couple pints would have resulted in different results.
Just in the way of clarification, that was my beer, Crash
Ranking can never die. There is no way to personalize search beyond a certain point, and then there needs to be rankings of those results. I will agree with you insofar as relevancy of your sites content will become more important, perhaps even enough to allow you to outrank sites with significant linking strategies aimed at ranking. It would favor smaller sites and businesses, really. which is good because otherwise they cannot compete.
When I saw a website that was none ecommerce just a simple site done by an individual proabably from their bedroom that had just gone around the internet blogging about a disgruntled dealing with another trader had reached a page rank of 5 I thought ranking is finished !
I have a colleague with a website that has a very low page rank yet he turns over 2.4 million a year. Page rank doesn’t really mean anything !
Nick
To expand on what Josh said, rankings will always play some factor and I agree that personalized search will make it easier to hit a target audience.
A problem I see with too much personalization is that Google could interpret my intentions completely wrong or make it difficult for me to find results that are outside the box of my previous searches.
Of course, no matter which direction search protocols take, superior content and highly usable sites will always be the goal for seo.
unless google are going to force people to subscriber or log into their google account then personalised searching is not going to happen. If google implemented such measures then those search engines which people seldom use will step in so that you do not need to log in.
Ranking will never be dead, it just changes to make the search business model more efficient. Just like it has since the introduction of the search engine, the ranking algorithms will continue to improve and evolve. Ranking will always have an impact. SEOs will just have to be that much more informed.
@SEO Training:
Personalization and all of the things that go along with it (Geo targeting etc) will not require a log-in.
That’s the big difference between what we have now and what we are looking at having in the future. Whether you log in or not, Google knows quite a lot about your search habits. This information, in the near future, will make it’s way into your search results.
Link bait.
Ranking won’t be dead. Any SEO worth his fee is already focused on analytics. Some more than others. And what the analytics says is that specific words are much better at delivering sales, leads, quotations than others. Two very similar keyword terms can have entirely different visitor characteristics. But to get that traffic you still need rankings.
Not sure what to think at this point about the change but I am worried about 2 major issues!
1. Since we can no longer track the data (since everyone search results is now different) does this mean Google will start charging huge marketing fees for this individual data flow?
2. I noticed Google didn’t add these features to the advertisement section … Since we can’t tell if we have been voted off the organic section on an individual computer, I guess the only way to ensure we are showing up on the search results is to buy our way to the top thru AdWords? Isn’t that the issues Google has fought on buying links for the past 4 years? Is Google not inspiring the “Buy Your Way to Page One” action?
Bruce Clays doesn’t know what he’s talking about no matter what happens with search still someone wants to be on the first page this is business -this won’t work. What happens when i clear the Google spy cookie, or don’t login to Google account? why do i need personalized search? what if my personality changes? what about privacy issues? Shared computer? This would also make real-time analytics more important also.
Ranking will never die. You have to be found in order to become part of the personalized search in the first place (agreed Al Wright).
I think this will ultimately work a lot better with longer tail keywords. Lets face it how how relevant is a broad search like “Java” anyway? At best you’re going to get very mixed results. What I’m surprised about mostly is how people seem to not be jumping up and down claiming that Google is invading their privacy. In order to return these searches they need to be monitoring your search history. That’s got to be stored somewhere, right?
This is very scary. You think you get it and then it all changes. Also what about people on Proxies or VPN or hosts from different parts of the country. What about if you want US based results when you are from the UK, what about public internet places…
CRAZY.
I noticed some changes on Google in the past couple of months. I don’t know if I was late to know this but somehow Google SERP display my last click website at the first ranking of a certain keyword. Though that website ranked 10th on the previous SERP.
A few notes I’d like to make are:
- Google’s new search platform is very susceptible to bots running in the background.
- A lot of people have been talking about Google getting more GUI friendly… After doing a little research I unveiled one of Google’s pilot domains where they are already testing out the whole flash based search engine. It’s easy to find so here’s a hint start doing a reverse DNS… Google owns over 8,000 domain names. Some even with sex related names!??? Also as you browse through the domain name list you’ll start noticing interesting things such as company X has recently been acquired by Google or you can take a peak at their Flash Search Engine in dev and many other neat things they have going on.
- Google is already mining data from other sources such as: feedburner.com and many of the other social ranking site. I believe we can expect Google to buy and or replace websites such as digg. As the users of digg and similar sites have already done millions of website ratings. By using this data it makes it much easier for Google to weed out spammy and legitimate results.
Ranking weill never be dead , I tend to agree through it may play less of a % of the whole pie however it will never be dead so keep rocking!
Ranking is NOT dead. Google will take the “You Tube” approach – allowing visitors to vote & promote specific websites.
Websites will be ranked based on Google’s 160+ criteria’s and how visitors personalize their search engine results.
I guess we will know in due time where ranking stands or should I say rest. Good info.
Thanks
I think that quite a few of you are missing the point.
Of course Rankings aren’t dead as such, there’ll always be a SERP and there’ll always be a ranking alogorithm but the days of dominating the SERP with a couple of keyword phrases that rank very high are over for sure and that’s what he means when he says ‘rankings are dead’.
Google have been sending the message for a while that we should be focussing on ranking for multiple keyword phrases and watching how that traffic behaves on site rather than trying to get that precious number one slot for a few phrases.
Wow, it’s going to be SERP anarchy! As a web marketer, I can’t decide if this is going to be liberating or frustrating. Guess it’ll be a race to see who can figure out a loophole first!
I’m not an expert but I am trying to place some logic to this situation.
Most important!! Without Adsense/Adwords, Google would be worth about 1/10th of their current value, if that.
I cut myself off —–
So, if a site is well built with keywords pertinent to the site, it shouldn’t be bothered by any type of manipulation….
Does anyone have thoughts on what the impact of “In Private” browsing will be? If masses of people start running their Web browsers with cookies turned off that will impact not just search but all kinds of behavioural targetting that I’ve come to know and love….
Great post from Bruce Clay. Ranking is not dead though, maybe its just re-defined.
Atleast it looks like we will not see much more black hat spam which is good.
Hi I did not expect this load of info. This is great. Thanks!
i dont know how on earth your supposed to optimise a site when all the results are “personalised”
this means you can come up in 10 different positions for 10 people doing the same search, i dont think this is an improvement when everyone should see the same result give or take a slight difference because of the different datacentres.
theres another video here slightly interesting.
http://videos.webpronews.com/2008/11/18/matt-cutts-on-changes-at-google/
After reading through this article, I feel that I really need more information on the topic. Could you share some more resources please?
Quite interesting, controversial and frightening for SEO if implemented in the most drastic sense. I am a bit skeptical that “ranking” being dead, but I see the same message over and over, in which content is king and producing a quality site should help avoid most of the obstacles. If I was to search for “Java”, I would have used for a longer tailed keyword. Long tail keywords in good content will win in the long run – I think we’ve all known that for quite some time. It will interesting on how they handle link building – that’s an area that I would love to hear more about.
I personally don’t like the idea of Google adopting personalized searches. There are many users who will no log-out when they are finished using the computer. If it’s a shared computer and another user with different likes n’ such hopes on, searches google, the results will be geared towards the previous user.
Jay
Very interesting video and a nightmare for SEO companies I should think !
Nick
Bruce had some great comments on how google’s algorithms changed back in 2008. We are still seeing the effects of those changes. We’ve been trying to tell people for years that landing page optimization (and site optimization) is critical for success. Ongoing testing and changes to your site, is now one of the most effective ways that you can increase the ROI of your website. Actually the #1 way. http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog
Thanks!
Jon
Lot of smarts in that ptsiong!
Just wanted to say thanks for sharing such useful information. I’ll pass it on to the readers of my blog
Web SEO Expert.
Very interesting! Thanks for sharing, keep up the good work. Vertical Words.
It’s still quite apparent that the websites with the most backlinks are the ones that are getting front page hits on google in the organic links.
Ranking is still very much alive and kicking !
hi wazzup… I just wanted to say that my Commodore C64 is crashing when I click on the pics… are you using some java or whatever?
Solid information…First time to your blog. Thank you for sharing. I have to bookmark this blog. I was a room decorator for a while. My decor tip of the week is: Please don’t overdecorate a house. A good walking path is a must. Thanks ….
Thank you for sharing this great Bruce
WONDERFUL Post. thanks for share. extra wait
If I’m a Java Programmer and I usually search for programming info, does that really mean that I have no interest in other uses for the term Java?
If I’m a Java Programmer and I usually search for programming info, does that really mean that I have no interest in other uses for the term Java?
Thank you for sharing this great Bruce
Good day! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could find a captcha plugin for my comment form? I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having trouble finding one? Thanks a lot!
Have you ever thought about publishing an e-book or guest authoring on other websites? I have a blog based upon on the same subjects you discuss and would really like to have you share some stories/information. I know my subscribers would appreciate your work. If you are even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e mail.
Hey there just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The words in your post seem to be running off the screen in Chrome. I’m not sure if this is a formatting issue or something to do with browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know. The layout look great though! Hope you get the problem solved soon. Cheers
Fantastic beat ! I would like to apprentice while you amend your website, how can i subscribe for a weblog site? The account aided me a applicable deal. I were tiny bit acquainted of this your broadcast offered shiny clear concept
Brand new target audience to that website and only yahooed around. I like the content along with style of your internet site. We saved it, so you have an acquaintance! Kind regards!
I believe ranking is not dead
.
Anyways, great post, I’m looking forward to more.