:: Media Viper ::

I’ve read the articles and forum posts as well as occassional blog posts on how personalized search is going to effectively end SEO101 as we know it. Here is the bite pun intended

You have to log in to your account with Google for personalization. Who wants an extra step added to search??? Wheres the KISS? Ohh Google can’t do that otherwise those comp sci degrees will seem a waste.

I was originally going to name this How The Yellow Book Proves Personalized Search Wrong. But I liked the new title better giving the ending as this is nothing personal against personalized search…I just don’t see it as the SEO Killer (number 132)

How the telephone book proves Google personalized search is nothing to fret over, and Why many search engine marketers are wrong about personalized search.

According to Google’s Web Help Center,

“Personalized Search is part of Google’s ongoing effort to make your search experience more relevant to you. Using Personalized Search, you can:

* Get the results most relevant to you, based on what you’ve searched for in the past

* View and manage your past searches, including the webpages, images, news headlines and Froogle results you’ve clicked on

* Create bookmarks you can access from any computer

One search engine marketer whose writings I read and someone who I feel knows more than most is Jim Hedger, and while I think he is great I think he went the wrong way see Jim feels that personalized search is the end to the usefulness of the old school SEO techniques.

“the advent of personalized results makes the standard website ranking report somewhat useless” was what Jim said in an article recently.

However there is only one slight problem with this thinking and that is the telephone book. Yes the white and yellow page telephone books with millions of residents and businesses phone numbers inside which can be found by anyone.

You are going to say that the telephone book is no longer relevant…it’s something your parents used, and you do not know where the one you have is, or you throw it away when it’s delivered perhaps.

That’s all good except one thing many seem to forget and that is history is a great teacher of the future,

You see I need not look in the telephone book for the number to my friends or family, in fact after several decades I can still remember the very first phone number of my childhood due to having to have memorized it back then.

I don’t need to look up the number to my favorite pizza shop, my favorite concert venue, where I like to buy my clothing, or shop for music and movies, nor to my favorite places to dine.

We do not typically search for what we know…..we search for what we do not know. Be it the results of the recent Super Bowl or how to install a ceiling fan in the den. This is what search is all about, information we do not know,

I do not need to search for topics on SEO or Search Marketing as I know them very well, the new news on these areas is delivered to me via Google alerts or I can set up an RSS reader and pull RSS feeds from the sites and topics I need to stay abreast of.

What I do need information on is one of my passions and that is a muscle car. A 1988 Monte Carlo SS. I love this car and the particular style. It is becoming more and more rare as time goes by and the upkeep and restoration is a way for me to find my balance.

When I look for a part such as the new rear springs I put on as the old ones felt like I ran over a speed bump at 65 mph when in reality it was an anthill at 5mph.

This is when I needed to do a search as I wanted to find the best parts, and others experience with them. Some parts cannot be found at the local automotive parts stores, and so I need to order online and have them delivered, this is when search is most important to me.

Another aspect is bookmarks, and once I have found a site I am sure I will find useful again I bookmark it and can get there without needing to do a search.

In fact once I know the website or company name, I can simply type that alone into any internet browser and be taken directly to the website, so for example if you type in the word ‘jegs’ you will be taken to http://www.jegs.com the website where I order most of my parts.

While writing this, I never once needed to do a search, as I said earlier, search is not for what we know, it’s for the millions of things we do not know.

SEO ranking results are even more important in the age of personalization.