Google's Personalised Search Results make a Good Website Vital

You may or may not know this, but if you have a Google account, when you're logged and using Google your search results are personalised based on sites you've visited, searches you've done and results you've clicked. Sites you visit often are featured higher in your results.

However, did you know that on 4th December, Google changed their system so that whether you have an account or not, your results are personalised in this way?

This is done with a cookie that is set in the browser or PC you use. If others use the same PC, then you see results based on their activity as well as yours. 

The cookie is set automatically every time you (or anyone else who uses your browser or PC) does any of the following:

• visits Google or any other Google property or site that uses Google – e.g. YouTube, AOL, GMail, BlogSpot/Blogger
• visits any site that uses a Google product – e.g. AdSense ('Ads by Goooogle') or Analytics (Google's web stats)
• visits any site that uses a product that Google owns – e.g. DoubleClick (the largest ad network apart from Google's own)

This is a huge chunk of the internet.

How do I stop seeing Personalised Results?

You can opt out. Here's a very informative article from Danny Sullivan, explaining how to opt out of personalisation and also giving plenty of further information on the change and its background.

However, most people won't even notice what is going on and won't opt out; Google isn't exactly publicising the change. Privacy advocates are justifiably concerned. Here in the UK, what Google are doing could even be considered illegal under EC legislation.

However, putting aside the privacy issues, from a professional point of view there is now a question of how to measure search engine rankings.

What about my Rankings?

Historically, logged in business owners who checked their Google rankings and clicked on their site would think that it ranked higher than it did; the real ranking that everyone else saw would be constant for all intents and purposes, although there could be variations depending on location.

From now on, it is quite possible that there will be no such thing as a 'real' ranking. You might choose to opt out of the personalisation and see 'real' results, but if the majority of users don't do that then how real are these results?

No-one knows yet. One thing is certain though; just because rankings are going to be harder to measure, that doesn't mean that they are no longer important.

What are the implications of this change? 

What is likely to become far more important than ever is making sure that your site makes the best first impression.

It's possible that all of these things could harm your rankings. No-one knows if the damage will be semi-permanent or permanent.

• if your site is down or slow when someone tries to visit.
• if your site has pages that say 'coming soon'.
• if the page the user ends up on doesn't have what they were looking for.
• if your site isn't packed with great information and easy to use.

This means that getting rankings has to go hand in hand with creating a great site; it won't be enough to get the rankings first, then worry about pleasing your visitors. It means that web development will require careful planning, because it's important to have a good job done on your site first time.

It's been advantageous now for some time to use an integrated solutions provider. With these latest developments, it is now absolutely essential that your SEO team either work very closely with your development team - or are the same provider.