Personalized Search will Effect Site Traffic

Personalized search is nothing so new but it is growing important, especially when Google is involved. Which means it is important to stay informed. Especially for website owners, IM, and everyone else who needs search engines to get traffic.

What has or might change in the next five points.

1. To assume rankings are global is no longer save. Anyone who is logged in, say into a Google or Yahoo account while searching, is potentially seeing different search results for the same keywords. It is possible to undo this limitations by logging out or switching personal searching off, but often people are not aware and frankly don't care to much about it, because the results showing are fine with them.

2. User experience is everything, especially for Google. This lets assume in case of Google to incorporate usage data into the search results. Google toolbar, Google analytics and its browser Google chrome can provide such data and as a result user experience will play a more important role in SEO.

3. Google ranking algorithm will potentially change with the new usage data Google can excess. Until now Google ranking emphasis much on inbound links which could change in favor to the new metrics Google has access to.

4. Estimating expected traffic from Google search results ranking is (was) possible, however this will be less accurate with personalized search or even completely unreliable. The estimation was made possible from an AOL data leak a few years back. From this data a No.1 position could expect 48% of traffic for the search keyword or keyword phrase.

5. It will mean the end to global ranking position as known. In return it will make it more difficult to find out how a website is ranked without intensive testing to determine the amount of traffic it can expect. One constant will not change, it is quality content on the website.

Google ranking will still be around and even so it is no more the same global, on a local scale it can still be helpful. Most likely new or improved metrics will emerge to fill the uncertainty personalized search has brought. "SE ranking has always been a means to an end," said Mike Tekula of Unstuck Digital, Inc ,"as the end being quality traffic and ultimately more sales, attention or whatever your website goal may be. Now, more than ever, high-quality traffic should be your focus."