Site Reference Forums

This has to be link bait.....

well, basically; better websites ... just the basic tricks don't work enough anymore, google is getting better and better at determining which sites are actually better, the personal search is a huge step there ... which is actually a good thing, no? as long your site actually offers quality, you have nothing to worry about, if your trying to rank for a crappy site, it will become more and more difficult ... seems fair to me ...

Well, as Laurie mentioned I am big on personalized search and it is certainly an important consideration for the SEO enthusiast. This development is interesting, but merely highlights the need to understand personalized search more than anything.

I think I will write something up for the SR Blog though.... a little refresher course.

What's important to get locked in is that MANY people are using Google personalized search without even knowing it. You see whenever peeps sign up for Google services such as;

Gmail
Google Toolbar
Google Analytics
Google Adwords
Google Webmaster tools
...and so on and so on...

...they are automatically given a Google account that includes personalized search which is ON by default (yup, they have to dig into the settings to turn it off).

This means there are more and more peeps using G personalized search all the time and is important to be aware of. Add to this the geo-graphically targeted results and universal search and you can see running mere ranking reports from your local IP is not a great way to measure SEO success these days... search referrer traffic becomes more important than mere rankings.

Of the 4 posts on PS these should get peeps the idea that haven't read;

What you should know about personalized search

and

the Art of personalized search optimization


... more and more, understanding how search engines use behavioral metrics is a part of the SEO learning process...