Some facts to help keep your sanity

If there is one area I’d consider myself an authority on, it’s personalized search. Actually, behavioural signals in general (implicit/explicit) are an area that I do a LOT of reading (and research) in. We’ve gone as far as actually testing against Google’s personalized search (on two occasions) to see exactly how much it was being implemented (surprisingly little). It seems that the folks at Google are taking it to a new level.

On Friday the folks at Google made an announcement relating to Psearch

	“Today we're helping people get better search results by extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide, and in more than forty languages. Now when you search using Google, we will be able to better provide you with the most relevant results possible.” - Google Blog

This is kind of interesting on a few levels;

• We’re wondering (at the Dojo) if this really is something recent as we have been seeing evidence of personalization when not logged in for a short while now… so it’s possible it was rolled out on some data centers before others.

• Deeper personalization requires more processing power; does that mean this is somehow related to the Caffeine update.

The main point here is that people know longer need to be logged into Google to see modified results. You will know when a set of results is modified when the ‘View Customizations’ link is inserted in the SERP. Like so;

(care of Search Engine Land)

Let’s put this to bed once and for all

Jeez… if there’s one thing that bugs me more than anything, is when seemingly sane people form apparently respected outlets, don’t seem to understand the fundamentals. Who cares when some blog in some far flung nether regions of the SEO makes a pedantic proclamation?  Not I… Heck, I don’t even get worked up when the latest round of ‘SEO sucks’ (‘is dead’ ‘is easy’ insert ignorant analysis here). Nope, that no longer irks me.

But those that should know better, the places where new search geeks and clients lurk for learning, I hold them to a higher standard.

Case and point; there is a big difference between (Google’s) PageRank, (PR) and ToolBar PageRank, (TBPR).

Now, as with past rants, this is not meant with malice, just a love for the game. Dear Titus, care of Site Pro News, stop confusing people with articles such as this one, it’s clearly madness of the highest order.

Now that Google has launched its Social Search, where do we stand? Is it a brave new world of search? Is the sky falling? Well, that’s what we’re going to find out – SOSG Style…. Of course. For starters, if you haven’t already, you can join at google.com/experimental - Next let’s get past the basics with a quick review. Over at the Google blog the most notable statement (for this geek) was;

“We've taken steps to improve the relevance of our search results with personalization, but today's launch takes that one step further.” Google Blog

Let’s keep that in mind. This as much a personalization than anything, but you knew that from last time right? Of course, you’re so damn clever, that’s what I like about ya!

Essentially the system collects contacts/info from;

1. Google Profile (and the sites you’ve listed; blogs, social etc..)
2. Google Contacts/Gtalk (friends/family/etc.. and Gtalk peeps)
3. Google Reader ( the blogs/sites you follow)

This also can include secondary contacts (friend of a friend) and essentially now becomes a recommendation engine to serve up potentially relevant content from your networks.

I thought it interesting that in Matt’s video he refers to it as a ‘Social Graph’ which obviously brings back visions of the Google Social Graph API we’ve been talking about the last while.

aka - Now Caffeine Makes Sense...

What’s the future of search (and by extension SEO)? Well, some 40% of the people we asked in our recent poll said personalization would have the greatest effect. But how? One such avenue would be taking it a step further than its current state… to add more layers to the search onion. In short, by getting more social; the rise of the social search engine.

Here on the Trail we’d recently we looked at some ways that Google could get social (which wasn’t far off, I’d wager). And then we took it a step farther by looking at their social network behavioural targeting (and potential issues therein). Will this be what the future holds? Or are they taking a completely different direction? It seemed we’d be waiting for the next big move and twiddle our didgits… not so.

Because last week we were (officially?) introduced to the world of Social Search at Google. It has been one of the buzz terms over the last few years and might finally see some adoption from one of the majors. Marissa Mayer was speaking last week of a new addition coming to Google Labs that contains;

“(..) a new feature that allows you to see results for queries from people in your social network. This works by using your Google Profile. If you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed, Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people.”