Google has put a huge amount personalized search into Google’s search engine results page (SERP). This isn’t surprising for most marketers and bloggers, the goal is to get more exposure in order to obtain more web traffic.
However, when optimizing your pages in order to increase your web ranking, you need to understand that search results are personalized to the user. This is something that many people don’t realize – or if they do realize this, it’s something that they overlook. Therefore, sometimes all Rank Trackers get the rank wrongly.
It means that not everyone`s SERP is going to be the same; in fact, almost no SERP will be alike. This makes sense if you think about it, since Google’s ultimate goal is for its search engine to provide the most relevant and high-quality content available to its users, which it can’t do unless it takes into account each individual user.
Factors that influence personalized search
The following are the factors that Google takes into account in order to personalize its search engine results for each individual user:
IP Address/Location – The location of the user plays a big part in personalized search. Google uses your IP address in order to determine your location. This allows them to provide you with better results when you type in generic search queries, such as “coffee shop.”
When you enter the Keyword “Sushi Near Me” in mobile devise. Google are using your IP address to determine your location to provide accurate result.
If you live in Manhattan, Google will assume based on your location and your search that you are looking for nearby coffee shops and will display a list of coffee shops located in Manhattan. If you are in Tokyo, then Google will display a list of coffee shops located in Tokyo.
Topic Interest – Google able to detect your interest if you are entering keywords into search engine with your account. As you know, YouTube is owned by Google. It’s also an absolutely huge social media platform (yes, YouTube is considered a social media). More than a billion people use YouTube and more than 4 billion videos are viewed a day.
That’s a lot of information that Google can gain in order to personalize its searches – and it absolutely makes use of that information. Google takes into account the viewing habits – specifically what genres or types of videos are watched – of individual users when personalizing their search but now the interest. If you are interested in a specific topic. Google is more likely shows you the topics you might be interested in, but If might not be very accurate.
Google also uses these “interest” data to help ads to achieve targeted audience. Therefore, any interest added into takes consideration on ranking the content. Google will rank content that aligns with your interest first before showing others. If you are log into your gmail account, you should see your interest in here as well. But it still incomplete.
These are mine Interests according to Google
Personally, as the picture above shows my interest, there are too many interests are false. For example, I do not like Celebrities News, Olympics, makeup, Fitness or Cooking.
How about Your’s? Does Google gets your interest correct?
This proof that Google has inaccurate Interests, because one of source prediction of Interest, it came for YouTube. By clicking on a video, you earn yourself an interest but clicking on a video does not equal user are interest in that video interest. Google also did track the user engagement for the video but do Google uses these data for search engine and Adsword. That remained a mystery.
Google take notice of the video tag you click on YouTube. It will automatically add into here without you knowing.
I think this is a big blow to SEO. If the web getting more personalized, it will be harder for us to perform SEO. Especially our rank tracker will be less accurate used to be. I doubt Rank Tracker businesses require more innovation.
Device – People use different devices in order to do searches from their desktops or laptops to their smartphones or tablets. Google takes this into account by providing mobile device users with personalized search results that contain websites that are mobile friendly.
Google also take consideration of multiple devices used by you. Don’t believes me? Check here. You will discover every devises you used before with your Google account.
Since he Mobilegeddon update from Google, many non-mobile friendly sites suffered for the rank drop on that days in SERP from mobile. It affects us as SEO a lot, we need a lot Rank Tracker did not incorporate the mobile rank tracking feature into their Rank Tracker because it is totally difference result from Desktop and Mobile.
It is not too late, feel free to use this to test your mobile fnd to keep up with triendliness.
Search History – Google also takes into account the user’s search history, including the websites that the user has visited and the searches the user has made.
For example, if you tend to keep up with the NBA, then when you do a search on a specific team, Google will bring up websites that not only provide relevant content to that team but that you have also visited in the past. Click here You check Your history data from Google with your Google Account
Another for example, if you are a Chicago Bulls fan and often go to the Bulls forum on Reddit, then a Reddit link will come up if you search for “Bulls,” whereas if you search for a team that you may not have had previous interest in, a Reddit link may not show up.
Email/Calendar – If you use Google’s Calendar app available to Gmail users, then Google will use the information on your calendar to personalize your search results.
For example, say you have a flight coming up. If you do a search for the airline you are using, then Google may show you the specific flight number and departure time of the flight you are on in your search results.
Google+ – Google used to show +1 button from Google+ at the bottom of the results if you are logged on to Google+ when you do your search, but now as Matt Cutts said Google does not use it rank factors. But Matt Cutt did mention they are using the social signal to rank. If your content go viral, no doubt it will feature in Google + as trending post to gain more traffics from you.
If you are using Google + yourself, you will realize some articles will be presented to you. If you are interested in Samsung, articles related to Samsung will be presented to you.
Chrome Bookmark – The impact of bookmarking is a little tricky to pinpoint because bookmarked websites are sites that users go to frequently anyway, so the reason Google may be displaying these bookmarked sites more often could be based on visit history.
If I am Google I definitely will use Bookmarking as a quality content signal. Especially Google own Chrome, Google might take these bookmark as the source of indication for quality content. But we cannot confirm that
And don’t worry these are only the few list of Google that I mention might be Affecting future of SEO. There are other thousand elements Google are tracking. Here is the list: Exploring Google’s User Data Collection
Here is why Google want to screw our SEO life
There are a number of reasons why Google is focusing so much on creating a more personalized search for its users. First of all, it’s important to remember that Google isn’t the only game in town. There are many other search engines out there, such as Bing or Yahoo!, that Google is competing against and because personalized search does improve user experience.
Duckduckgo and Google, which side will you choose?
Now I dare you go to use Duckduckgo for 10 days and you will realize the differences of both search engines. If you use both search engine before, please shares the experiences in the comment below.
At the moment, Google is by far the most popular, but it must continue to give users what they want in order to remain at the front of the pack. Secondly, personalized search is clearly the way of the future. Google isn’t the only company that is implementing the use of personalized search.
Take Amazon for example. You are able to observe their user personalized product results through their product recommendations. If you’ve ever bought a book or a movie on Amazon, you’ll notice that they’ll recommend numerous other books and movies based on your purchase.
They’ll also use recent searches on their website to help make more relevant recommendations. They will also use hyper-personalized communications by using the data they collect to send out personalized emails containing promotions and coupons to its customers.
Google kills two birds with one stone
Another reason for Google collecting all the data. It is because Google wants to have powerful well-targeted advertisement platform[Adswords]. Therefore, a better-targeted advertisement will lead to more marketers using it which lead to more money for Google. Looking these numbers in 2011, how much does Google make from Adsword.
Credit:Word Stream
How can we take advantage of Google personalized search?
Now that you know how Google personalized search, you’re probably wondering how you can take advantage of this in order to strengthen your SEO. The following are a few tips to help you better optimize your website for personalized search results:
Optimize for local results – Since Google takes into account the location of its users, you need to make sure that you optimize your content for the location you are based out of, if you have a location. This means adding the NAP (name, address and phone number) of your physical location or locations.
This way, if you have several businesses throughout the country in Charlotte, Chicago and Seattle, your content will be better ranked for relevant searches in those areas.
Website mobile friendly – Ensure that your website can be properly displayed on all devices. This will ensure that you will rank highly on mobile searches (keep in mind that websites that are not mobile-friendly will rank much lower on mobile searches with Google’s latest algorithm update).These days, we observe more local personalized search done in mobile. Google is more focusing in mobile. Therefore, mobile friendly website will have advantage now and in future coming.
Create return visitor to boost search history – Big Content is the way to go, I am not talking about create longer or bigger content, but a content to be a resource that users continuously engage to according to this article. the lower your bounce rate will be and the higher your dwell time will be. If you are creating content that your readers love, they will return to your blog or website on more than one occasion.
The mediocre content cannot rank well in the future search. Since Google are getting more intelligent to measuring content quality and the expectation from visitors grows bigger. We have to tell ourselves we cannot allow ourselves create more mediocre contents, it just costing more your time and energy.
While creating extraordinary content. This builds up the visit history to your website, something that Google will take into account when personalizing search results for those users by using user history data. If Google see a solid number of visit to your site. Google will rank your website better.
Big Content is something visitor will return to your website. Each time visitor return to your website, it will build user history in Google Data. Google will take that as ranking important signal.
The future of personalized search of Google
More Demographic and Interest data will be use in Personalized Search
Google will try to understand human more and try to present the information or content that we might like. Personally I do think Google will take a user interest to matches other users interest. If a user has a positive behavior on a content. Google may automatic present a hypothesis. Base on the hypothesis to predict the other users with the same interest might like this content too. If they do, Google will rank that piece of content high when the same “interest” users search for that keyword
Based on interests, Google may present your website to other users as well. In the meantime, Google will take note the other users behavior as well like time on site, bounce rate and click through rate. If the other users have positive feedback. Your content definitely will remain the first page for the same interest users only.
For example:
Jonny visited a business content and Google takes notice of the relevancy of the content and his interests. The content and Jonny’s interest shares the same keywords. Therefore, Google forms a hypothesis stating a user with “Businesses” interest like this content “The 10 business Strategies You Shouldn’t Avoid It” and rank it in first for other users with “businesses” interest as well.
Jonny
Brian
Ben
Norris
Jennifer
Kenny
Demographic
Age 23
Male
Age 25
Male
Age 25
Male
Age 39
Male
Age 27
Female
Age 41
Male
Interest
Businesses
Businesses
Businesses
Businesses
Businesses
Businesses
Time On site
10 Min
8 Min
11 Min
1 Min
0.5 Min
1 Min
Later on, more users clicking on that content. Brian and Ben found the article interest and show positive behavior with Average 9 Min. While Norris, Jennifer, and Kenny show negative behavior with 1 Min in that content. Google may take a closer look in other data to find the similarity in Jonny, Brian, and Ben. By looking at the above table, Google able to know these three people are in the same demographic.
Therefore, Google will rank the content better when the users who have the same demographic and same interest with Jonny, Brian, and Ben when they are using same keywords. It is not necessary to be just demographic, Google might use other set data to provide content that users like.
Google may assign relevant scoring to each interest of a user. Google can use search history to determine a user interest scoring by looking into how many percentages of that interest related content with positive behavior.
Wait! Why demographic matters to user experience?
It will be important in the future to target the right demographic users to see the right content. Difference demographic has difference perception of a great user experience. It is not just about the outlook of website but everything of a website: the content voice, the content length, images, video and more.
Google know you cannot design great user experiences for everyone but for only one group. This is another great step for Google. An interesting study shows that difference demographic really defining user experiences differently. The study takes difference demographic and asks them how they would define a great user experiences.
User experience for everyone equal to no user experience
Click To Tweet
If you design the wrong content user experience will lead to difference set of demographic in future. It is kind of common sense for Google to do it because Google do understand difference sets of demographic have attracted to difference set of contents.
In the marketing perspective, if will affect your product conversion. Some product does not fit into all demographic. The most obvious examples are clothing, cars, and Perfume.
An example of User Experience for a specific demoghaphic
Especially for Millennials, they have short attention life span. They do not read or share long content. They even named this phenomenon ” TL DR”. ” TL DR” means Too Long, Didn’t Read. An example from Content Creator from Digiday has the creative ideas of having TL DR filter button to attract Millennials audiences.
When TLDR button turn off, it will become a long content
Newscred has the webinar with Buzznews about creating content for Millennials. They really believe that you cannot create content for everyone, but you need to create specific contents for Millennials.
In the future, Google wants to filter Google search result by giving the content Millennials want to read when he is doing queries search in Google. Google will using big data to determine what content is for Millennials and what content are not. Thus, you cannot create a content for everyone, but no one will love it. You have to be careful not to have Google giving you the wrong demographic or interest traffic.
But how Google know my content is relevant to an Interest and a demographic?
We are seeing Google want to understand more in deep language. In last year, Google invest in another two more UK artificial intelligence startups to understand more about deep language. In future, It is possible for Google even can understand your sarcasm and keywords do not matter, but the Context is. I also predict we content marketers can declare our content’s interest and user demographic to Google, but I do think this will be unlikely because Google think we definitely will abuse it.
Google Now will replace old school search bar?
Google is going for context. In marketing realm, we call it context Marketing. Context Marketing is all about delivering the right message to the right person via the right medium, at the right place and at the right time. Google wants “Google Now” to be right medium in context Marketing. The search feature is actually something Google wants to phase out.
They eventually want their users to be provided with information without having to look for it based on context. For example, if a user is looking up directions on Google Maps, Google may eventually be able to recommend coffee shops along the way that the user has looked up before based on their web use history.
Not to mention that the average Android smartphone user only does an average of 1.3 browser searches a day. Mobile users prefer downloading apps that will provide them with the information they want, which is why Google released Google Now.
Google Now is an app that allows users to choose information cards relevant to them that they can flip through without doing searches. For example, one card could have the current weather on it while another could have the previous day’s baseball scores. This is Google’s endgame for personalized search.
Try to imagine the experiences with and without Context experiences in Google Now with user A and B
Scenarios:
User A without enhanced context experience
User A is looking for bags for work. Therefore go to Google and search “Buy bags for work”. Millions for search results are presented to him. Then, he went through all top 10 results to find nothing he wanted. Now, he key in the keyword “best bag for work” and realize all the content mention bag for women but not for man. Then go add another keyword “best man bag for work” and click on each content goes through each picture one by one again. Then frustration kick in and give up.
User B with enhanced context experience
While, user B just search “Buy bags for work”. Immediately, Google Now will ask for characteristics he looking for? Materials, prices, color, and Fashion style. After selecting those options, Google will return with the man bag result because Google knows he is looking for man bag not women bag. Google Now will also show the result from the previous same Google Interest user who are also looking for men bag with his feedback or review. User B able to ticks the item that he want to drop it in Wanting list. while cross the item to disallow Google Now shows the same characteristics bags to user B. Therefore, user B has less result but accurate results. After done selecting, in Google Now Wanting List, user B compare all the bags. And Google knows user B dislike online shopping based on history data. Google will shows available store near by. Google Now will also find discount and coupon for User B. After completing the purchase, Google Now will ask user B for the review.
What is the difference experience?
User B is provided with the surprise coupon helping him save cost, but the huge difference is Google Now provide the unique and accurate user experience. In future, Google Now has the data to understand users wants and needs. Number one result why user A receives too much information and it is very frustrating. While User B gets all information are well sorted and presented the information in well manners for the users.
THIS IS THE FUTURE
Larry Page did mention in Wired News
“Google has been moving in this direction with tools like Google Now that try to anticipate what you need to know before you ask”
Voice optimization and Knowledge Graph for SEO
In future, no one will use keyboards, everything will be using voice. Therefore, it is important for us also understand the voice intent and figure out our content belong to which voice intent. In future, Google now will be a personal assistant.
Therefore, Google will show a snippet of your content based on Voice Intent. But how Google know which part of your content answering which intent? For example, you have a content about knowledge graph. Voice Intent is “What is Pad Thai?”. Google need to know which part of your content is answering the voice intent and Schema is the solution now.
But in future Google will use deep language to answer it. It can go beyond that. While user learning about Pad Thai, base on the user data, if the user has interest on Cooking and recipe, Google ask the user whether the user need a recipe for Pad Thai. If the user has interest on eating, Google will be given the direction to nearest Pad Thai restaurant. The biggest questions of all are “Will there be a place for us[SEO] ?” “How deep does Google can read and understand the context of a content?” ” Do we need to optimize our contents for Google deep language?” and “Do we still can benefit for this?”
Personalized search is something you need to keep in mind when optimizing your website. Many marketers and bloggers only pay attention to what Google wants when it comes to adjusting and improving their SEO strategy. However, you would be wise to focus on what users want instead since this is what Google is focusing on.
Learn How To Make Your Content Go Viral With This E-Book
18 pages of unorthodox techniques.
8 building blocks of contagious content.
6 types of readers who will share your content.
Unusual approaches viral writers use.