Google Personalized Search

Did I miss some change in the higher-ups of the searching giant? Or some secret takeover has occurred in recent times? Because it seems they’ve changed their slogan to “Google knows what you’re searching for – Even more than you do”. Take a look at this official announcement regarding personalized search …

Today we’re helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than forty languages. Now when you search using Google, we will be able to better provide you with the most relevant results possible. For example, since I always search for [recipes] and often click on results from epicurious.com, Google might rank epicurious.com higher on the results page the next time I look for recipes. Other times, when I’m looking for news about Cornell University’s sports teams, I search for [big red]. Because I frequently click on www.cornellbigred.com, Google might show me this result first, instead of the Big Red soda company or others.”

You can read the entire post here

To start with my rant … I’d like to know exactly who searches for recipes at Google, only to click on the same epicurious.com every time, from the results page. Has Google turned into some sacred doorway to World Wide Web, where everybody is dying to pass through this holy entrance before visiting a website one could have easily visited without engaging Google? And what’s next? Incorporating our bookmarked pages into the search results, so that the next time we carry out some search, we’ll be served with the list of URLs we’ve already bookmarked. Sure, help us get better results by showing websites we already know of? Doesn’t that sound like really exciting?

There are even better suggestions, keeping in mind the new slogan. For example why bother taking into account what the user has typed into the search box, instead use his searching history and show results based on the queries he has been using in past, irrespective of the search query he has *mistakenly* typed at this point in time. For example, if the user was found searching for porn in the recent past, flood him with results containing porn even if he has typed “repentance” in the search box because … Google knows better (and also because it serves the guy right for being mischievous :S  Ideally, we shouldn’t be typing anything at all, instead there should be a new button in place of “I am feeling lucky” with a little change in text that says “I am feeling nutty”. Subsequently, all we’ll need to do is to log onto Google and click on that button and lo … Google will display web pages based on our recent browsing history. That’s magic, innovation and convenience for you, all at the same time. So what, if you’re stuck with the same set of websites for eternity?

Probably, I’ve kind of dragged it a bit too far but the reason for this outburst is definitely not its impact on my field (which is Search Engine Optimization). In fact, I like all sorts of changes or additions in Google ranking factors when it comes to my profession. However, this is not a welcome change by any means and I’ll be discussing about its consequences for online businesses in my next post.