How Does Google Personalize your Results

Google stores everyones searches, the location is dependent on whether the user is signed into his or her Google account. The urls and searches are stored in the browser cookies and can be there for an unlimited time, if you are signed into your Google account, or for up to 180 days if you are not signed in. That is still six months of previous searches being scrutinised before your search finds results that are unique and not related to your previous search. All your future searches will be affected once this takes place.

You ask yourself if this will really matter to you. You will still be receiving the best content and content that is relevant to you. My argument is that this will stifle the evolution of the internet. But no doubt the clever people at Google will find a way to manipulate an algorithm so that fairness is back in place even though a personal search is directed at the customer and not the company. I for one am a conniseur of new content and do not want to see visited links on my Google searches. I can bookmark those please. Keep my content fresh. Maybe there will be an option for that in the future.

This already has an effect on search rankings. It will be harder for SEO guru’s to get their clients on the first page if the searches are all made personal. Some clients will be able to see the sight, and especially the SEO companies would have to hire outside testers because naturally their searches will always come up on top. These examples will be shown when an SEO company does a search for “content generation”. The result will appear and when visited, that information will be stored. So that the next time our SEO company searches for “backlinks” there is a likelihood that the same website will appear even though the searches are not related.

You can view how your results are filtered and customized by the Google link in the top right hand corner of the page. This tool is likely to stay in place but whether it will make an accurate representation of what websites are out there is a different question that we can only ask once this has been implemented.

We all now have to listen up to the changes in Google to try and stay ahead of the curve. But it seems like SEO companies will struggle with breaking into sustained markets. I have no doubt that google will find solutions.