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Are We Too Excited About Personalization?
By Mike Murray | December 6, 2007
The good thing about these conferences, including Search Engine Strategies in Chicago this week, is that they put some issues in perspective.
In other words, there has been a big buzz about personalization on Google this year. Any change is going to have its pros and cons. So why not make search more relevant to a user if personal profiles can enable Google to adapt to an individual’s search preferences and patterns?
During the session, “Personalization, User Data & Search,” part of the discussion focused on cricket. Are people searching for the game or the insect? Aaron D’Souza, a software engineer for Google, touched on a few key points, including:
- Google, he said, excludes some searches from personal search, such as medical conditions and sexual preferences. Panelists had posed the issue of how a relative without a medical problem may actually be donducting a search for someone else.
- Two people using the same computer. After talking about medical being excluded, D’Souza still brought up a good point about computer. In some cases, different people living in the same house could have common interests and influence, making at least some of their searches valid. In that case, I say why not include health and medical in the personalization? Are there some legal issues about how someone uses their own computer or makes it available to others in the same house?
- Extent of personalization. D’Souza noted that personalization is only a small, subtle part of the results anyway. Any personalization, based on search preferences over time, are co-mingled with a host of regular results anyway.
What does all of this mean for our tracking and success?
At Fathom SEO, our teams will continue to report on how keywords rank everywhere. If a huge disparity emerges with a client, we’ll deal with that when necessary.
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December 20th, 2007 at 10:19 am
I can see both the good and evil that could come from personalization. Good maybe better results. Evil someone could obtain the information on searching habits and maybe steel identities, leak personal information like a disease or illness. Ultimately how far will it go? Could it become the “Big Brother” scenario?