SEO - Are you ready for personalised search?

June 19th, 2007

Gord Hotchkiss recently wrote about his concerns that the impact of personalised search was being underestimated , and that SEO’s were paying far too little attention to personalised search.

As usual Gord talks alot of sense. In my opinion there are still too many Search Engine Optimisation ‘experts’ in the industry wholly fixated with page views, hits and search engine ranking, with little or no focus on return on investment (ROI). It still suprises me how many ‘experts’ in the field, still discuss at length the use of age old optimisation techniques with little or no regard for or utilisation of new techniques and services.

As Gord himself stated on his post on Mediapost

“ This was a perfect opportunity to start planning for the new world of SEO, post-personalization. There’s a ton of value we can add, as smart, proactive practitioners, but I didn’t see anyone take the opportunity to delve into this. Perhaps the really smart ones were keeping their mouths shut, content to let their competitors bitch about the inevitable while they plotted their takeover.”
Many Search Engine Optimisation specialists appear though to be taking somewhat of a ‘cautious’ viewpoint on personalised search at this stage. I can understand why this approach could be taken, however I would suggest that those exploring the opportunities in its infancy are more likely to be able to exploit personalised search to its full potential. From an optimisation perspective, it could change the whole way we work, and go about optimising sites, and thus as Gord states, many people are approaching it from a damage limitation perspective.
Personalised search isn’t just something that applies to Google, both MSN and Yahoo are currently exploring personalisation of the web, and search itself it going to play an important part in that future. One only has to look at the impact of social networks to see how applying things to oneself is already changing the face of the web.

To read the full article by Gord, please go to http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=62013&passFuseAction=PublicationsSearch.showSearchReslts&art_searched=&page_number=0

PS - Gord - If you fancy sending us your slide deck - it would be much appreciated

Entry Filed under: SEO Industry, SEO