Google Personalized Search is Google’s way of taking into account a user’s search history to fine tune the search engine results it presents to that user. It means that for search terms that can mean different things to different people, Google will try to match up the user with the results most likely to be applicable to them, based on their past search history. This, by the way, can be disabled or erased at any time if you are uncomfortable with the idea of Google “knowing” that when you type in “apple” you mean the fruit and not the brand of computer.

Personalized search also works on a broader basis when nobody is signed in. With web search history enabled even when nobody is signed in to Google, the search engine will generate results based on 180 days worth of web history, regardless of who went where on the web. And with signed-out personalized search, the individual sites that influenced the personalization can’t be listed, so even a fairly nosy person can’t deduce much from it.

Webmasters wonder whether personalized search will doom their SEO efforts or actually help them. For those who avoid any and all deceptive practices and who concentrate not just on keywords, tags, and all the minutiae of SEO but on providing top quality content, then personalized search will only help, because it will boost a site based on people reaching it and bookmarking it (or visiting it frequently), regardless of how they found the site.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 12:05 am and is filed under Google, Searcn Engine Ranking, SEO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.