"Personalized Search - The Basics, Google Ethos, and Optimization" as presented by Rob Garner (@robgarner), Strategy Director, iCrossing, at the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) in Toronto, Canada on Friday, April 9, 2010.

1. Personalization:
The Basics, Google Ethos,
and Optimization
Rob Garner SMX Toronto
Strategy Director April 2010
iCrossing

2. Agency services
Research & Website Search Mobile
Media Social Media
Analytics Development Optimization Marketing
• Market research • Paid search • Site development • Natural search • Social media • Mobile strategy
• Campaign media strategy optimization audit development
analytics • Display and rich • User experience • RSS Feeds • Reputation • Mobile site
• Integrated media advertising development • Content management development and
dashboard • Online to offline • Creative and syndication • Word-of-mouth optimization
reporting integration technical design campaigns • Mobile media
• Linguistic • Global campaign and development campaigns
Profiling integration
• Experiential
Mapping
Technology
• Merchantize™ • Interest2Action™ • Network Sense™ • Network Sense™ • Sharp View™
Paid Media Search Analytics Reputation Monitoring Social Media Marketing Dashboard
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3. with clients including…
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4. Awards and Accolades
Search Agency of Top Digital Agency
the Year Top Search Agency
Top 25 Interactive Fastest Growing
Companies
Number One
Search Agency Top 25 Interactive
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5. THE BASICS

6. Personalization is a significant philosophical shift,
From the objective results
To the subjective results
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7. But the reality is that the current state of
SERP changes are somewhat subtle
Turned-off Session-based, signed out
• 20% displacement of organic rankings based on session activity alone (lower ranking
displacement not shown)
• This search preceded by “arkansas things to do,” “arkansas vacation,” “arkansas hot
springs rock and mineral shops”, etc.
• “We're generally not changing the entire character of the page” - Brian Horling, Google,
SMX West 2010
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8. Personalization impacts both paid, natural,
and feed submissions
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9. As a user, you can turn it off, but it’s not easy
• Add “&pws=0” to the end of
your URL string in the
address bar
• Signed-in searches, you
must remove all Web
History
– http://www.google.com/support/
accounts/bin/answer.py?answe
r=54067
• Signed-out searches, click
on “Disable
Customizations,” and/or
clear browser cookies
– http://www.google.com/support/
accounts/bin/answer.py?answe
r=54048
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10. Personalization algos can vary for multiple
users on the same machine
• Theme and interest
based
• Session data can shape
results, and help
differentiate between
multiple uses on one
machine
Happy couple who might be searching on the same computer.
Google sees them as two different people
Photo CC - Flickr
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11. Personalization is available worldwide, in 40
languages
• Arabic • Greek • Russian
Bulgarian Hebrew Serbian
Catalan Hindi Slovak
Chinese Indonesian Slovenian
Croatian Italian Spanish
Czech Japanese Swedish
Danish Korean Ukrainian
Dutch Latvian Vietnamese
English Lithuanian …And others
Filipino Norwegian
Finnish Polish
French Portuguese
German Romanian
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/personalized-search-for-everyone.html
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12. You can click on some searches to view
customizations
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13. Ranking reports are no longer fully stable
• Can be biased towards
– IP address
– Applied user history on machine
– Other personalization factors
• Objective rankings can be taken via proxy
– But it still doesn’t tell the whole story on personalized referrals
– Overall, scraper-based rank checking software should remain a directional
datapoint of performance
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14. But ranking reports won’t die…
• … They will just shift to analytics-based tracking
• Personalized results will pass a ranking variable in the Google
referring string “cd=1”, with 1 equal to the organic page
ranking
• Actual average position may become the norm for organic
rankings
• Full implementation would enable natural position reporting to
become more effective and accurate
– http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/04/upcoming-change-to-googlecom-
search.html
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15. Other fun facts
• Personalization encompasses mobile, geography/local, theme,
user behavior, and web search history
• 180 days of history are considered for non-logged-in users
• If you are logged-in to any Google service, then you are
receiving personalized results
– Adwords, Orkut, Gmail, Adsense, etc.
• Site data is a signal, measured from the URL string and also
the Google Toolbar
• Yahoo and Bing also have some personalization elements, but
are not as robust as Google
• Personalization is nothing new
– So don’t freak out
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16. THE GOOGLE ETHOS AROUND
PERSONALIZATION

17. Google’s “obligation” to use your data
• At the first SMX Advanced in Seattle, June 2007, Matt Cutts
stated that Google had an obligation to leverage the personal
data provided by its users into something useful.
Personalization is one outcome of that obligation.
• Google’s Craig Silverstein once painted a futuristic portrait of
personalization in his description of “search pets” – essentially
these are robots that know you and can complete various tasks
on command
Bottom line: Hyper-personalization is a core
goal at Google, and will continue to impact the
results – we may just be seeing the beginning
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18. Bryan Horling of Google, interview with The Register
• March 3, 2010, SMX West :
• Google personalizes 20% of all web searches, based generally on
web history, location, and social factors.
• “As it stands today, just about every user who is engaging with
Google search today is affected [by personalization].”
• "For years, we've been personalizing for an entire continent [or
country],"
• "You should be creating compelling and interesting content that's
focused on the user. Your website should be fast. It should be clean.
It should be understandable. It should be compelling enough that
users want to return to use it."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/03/google_personalized_search
_explained/
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19. OPTIMIZING FOR
PERSONALIZED RESULTS

20. There are many different signals related to
personalization
• Geo
– IP address
– Google Nearby
• Time of day
• User behavior
– Session data can differentiate between users on the same machine
– Web search history
– Toolbar data
– Bookmarks
– Clicks
• Social
– Links in your Google Profile
– Links to your social network profiles (ex. Twitter)
• Technical
– Device
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21. Optimizing for Personalized results
• Do the basics very well
– Clean tech hygiene, know your analytics, good page markup, thoroughly
tested keyword targeting
• Optimize for search with personalization turned off
• Develop both high-level themes, and long tail
themes
• Build up your social networks, and use them to
disseminate and promote relevant content
• Know your target user through market research
• Develop compelling content strategies
“On The Impact Of Personalization And Real-Time Search”
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=118830
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22. Knowing your target audience is now more
important than ever
• Inform your personas through interviews, and ask subjects to talk
about how they search; or, better yet, observe how they search online
• Map keyword learnings into more complex scenarios for the process
of finding
• Leverage learnings from paid search and analytics data early on
• Remember that often the real gold mine in all of market research is
finding and leveraging just one new word or linguistic cue
• Get out of the habit of making assumptions based on what you think
your target audience will search for.
• Look to social networks for linguistic cues
• Use internal searches to help inform campaigns and future designs
• Consider the various types of digital assets, and how your target
audience searches for them
“The Days of Guessing at Keyword Research Are Over”
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121839
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23. Use search data and ask search questions
when developing personas
“More About Search In The Web Design Process”
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=120971
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24. Getting back to basics:
Internal SEO considerations that a site owner controls
• Article Syndication • Micro Sites and Sub-Domains
• Body Content • Obtaining Links from Relevant Sites
• Canonicalization Issues • On-page Javascript and CSS
• Cloaking • Optimizing Images
• Digital Assets • Page Titles
• Directory Presence • Redirecting
• Document Accessibility • Requiring User Actions
• Duplicate Content • Robots.txt Files
• Frames • Secure Servers
• Hidden Text • Server Location
• Internal Linking Optimization • Sites Built in Flash
• Javascript & Flash Navigation • Splash Pages
• Market Research • URL Structure
• Meta Descriptions • Using Ajax
“22 Considerations for Improving Natural Search Performance”
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=73550
“Hot SEO Trend for 2010:Getting Back To Basics”
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/index.cfm?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=123631
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25. It’s worth repeating
To succeed in a personalized world of search…
Do the basics very well
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26. THANK YOU
SMX Toronto
April 2010
Rob Garner
Strategy Director
iCrossing.com
Rob.Garner@icrossing.com
214.676.2089
@robgarner
www.facebook.com/garner
GreatFinds.iCrossing.com
Linkedin.com/in/robgarner
Media Post Search Insider Blog
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