Friday 2nd of February was a momentous day in the search industry. Google did something very subtle, but the consequences of what they did will change the face of search forever. Google launched personalised search results; very quietly, there were no fanfares, no press conferences. Just a little mention on their blog.
Why is this a big deal you may ask? Well if you have a signed up for any of the ever growing list of Google services such as:
- GMail
- Adsense
- Adwords
- Picassa
- Analytics
- Webmaster tools
- Google bookmarks
- Google notepad
- Google Docs and spreadsheets
- Google Checkout
To use any of these services you need an account with Google, before last Friday Google let you decide weather you wanted to be logged in or not. Not now though. When you arrive at google.co.uk to do a normal search. You will already be logged in, and Google will be watching you. Logging every search you make (although you can opt out of search history) and over time tailoring the results that you see to make them more relevant for you. If you have the Google toolbar, Google will be using your surfing habits data to improve your search results. If you subscribe to rss feeds using Google reader or personalised homepage it will learn your interests and tweak the results to be more relevant to you. If you have used Google checkout it, will know what you have bought how much you paid for it, and thus know more about your social habits.
This is great news for the average Google user. But for the search engine optimisation industry it could prove to be a real headache in the long run. Only time will tell how different results for each person will be.
Here at our home in Essex, Webbuilt4u we will be watching how this feature pans out for our clients. We will report back our findings here, on the shiny new creative suit blog.
