Personalised and Localised Search Results

Initially search engines set out to offer a service whereby users could type in their keywords into the search engine and it would bring up the same results for every user. In a recent website post by Alex Moskalyuk it was stated that "68 percent of search engine users click on the first page of results" (http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=14327). These statistics outline the importance of high website rankings, but all this is about to change. The traditional search results will soon begin to disappear as the new era of personalised search will take its place.

Search engines such as Google are heading towards a more personalised search. The search engines will use data and current information about each individual user so that when they enter keywords the search engine will produce results it believes to be the most relevant to that individual user.  In relation to the move towards personalised search Sep Kamvar (Google engineer) stated "Our goal…is to make your Google search experience better based on what we know about your preferences, without you having to do any extra work".

Although the idea of personalised search results may sound appealing there is the issue of personal information being shared with the search engines, which users may feel uncomfortable with. On the other hand this service will provide the user with a much better array of results; compared with the traditional results where what the user is searching for turns out to be ranked at 100 on Google. Through personalised search also comes reduced spam, if the links are not there to be clicked on, then spam will progressively become nonexistent and seize to serve its purpose.

The movement into personalised search will also create problems within the search engine optimisation industry. It will prove difficult to create website content which has high rankings if the results which appear for every individual user are unique to them.  The only option for the marketing and search engine optimisation industries are to provide quality, rich website content relevant to that website in order to be found by the search engines.  The movement to personalised search will mean that there has to be a vast improvement of relevant, quality website content, otherwise websites will simply not be found.  The personalised search will soon be standard and the only way marketers and search engine optimisers can survive in this new era of search is to research and develop relevant and quality content for their websites.

Article submitted Friday, May 30, 2008
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