A Christmas Gift No One Wants: Google Algo Changes
"Awesome! Everyone one of these results is about hair styling products!"
Google has once again changed the playing field for those attempting to make money online. This time around it has been decided that they are going to basically ensure that everyone gets “personalized” search results.
The gist is that, even without being logged into any Google services, every computer (the computer, not the user, because Google seems to be running on the assumption that they are one in the same here - See pic below for humorous consequence) will have its searched preferences logged in cookie form so that subsequent searches on the G will yield results that are more in tune with what the person that predominantly uses that computer is after.
It should be stated that this is entirely an opt-out system, meaning that people that aren’t aware of it which is probably 85% of users (to pull a realistic but totally made up number out of my nethers) will get these results, and a further 10% of people simply don’t care enough to bother, or actively prefer the personalized results.
The typical reaction of an SEO based affiliate upon hearing about any change at Google
Naturally this (like every other change) has much of the SEO community up in arms as there seems to be the belief that people will never again be exposed to websites that they haven’t ever been to before. The logic of that seems to fail on the basis that people tend to bookmark pages that they intend to revisit, or at least remember enough about the name of the page or product (sometimes even the URL) and search for that, instead of the generic terms.
Where this becomes useful the end user is simply that Google search will finally be able to contextualize searches like they’ve been promising since 2001. No longer will I be offered coffee or holidays when I look up “Java”.
Grandpa just wasn't the same after attempting to look up information on Google using Little Jimmy's computer, due to Little Jimmy's search history & preferences
If you’re looking up “red socks”, and you’re not in the US, you’ll most likely get information that is more about something to go between your shoes and feet than it is about baseball teams.
So why am I writing all this when it clearly has little to do with Affiliation Cash?
Simple. I’m reminding people that the sky isn’t falling, and that SEO still has it’s place.
Most people are generally searching for something they don’t actually know about already, which means personalized search is useless for anything other than providing context around it. If your site is SEOd to the hilt for download based terms, and someone decides they want to “download free programnamehere”, there’s a good chance that your site will still have the same SERP as it would have without these changes. The differences lie pretty much only in areas where language becomes ambiguous, such as “bowling”. Someone might be looking for a lane of 10 pin, lawn bowls, or the equivalent of pitching in cricket.
So just chill out, and keep trying to get your sites decently optimised.
Happy Hunting - Harvey
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