Google to personalize results: You got a problem with that?

Posted on February 13, 2007 by Dave J.

Someone suggested I take a little time to consider the ramifications of Google personalizing search results. And it is worth some thought.

The biggest impact to us marketers is loss of true tracking of SERP standings, because they will vary from user to user. After doing a few searches today, I think this holds much less impact for B2B because the results are pretty strong already. (I also didn’t see any indication of personalization when making a comparison logged in vs. out.)

You might not know you are #1 on your favorite keyword-phrase anymore, but you traffic shouldn’t be impacted. Hopefully, tho, this reduces some of the gaming for the top slot and focus on results instead. There are some B2B terms with double meanings that could benefit from such personalization.

Apparently this has renewed some concern about the Google-monster taking over vertical search again. If search is personalized, vertical sites/directories may be rendered useless as a distinct filter of content. I wasn’t so sure, and needed some empirical data. Luckily I found something useful:

Taking a closer look at Google’s recommendation page for me (which is a part of the personalization program), everything relates to consumer-related searches. I suspect that B2B searches don’t have enough traffic to generate useful recommendations. As a matter of fact, I’d say the recommendations were actually an inaccurate reflection of my search behavior.

While we could have long discussion of whether users will give up privacy to benefit from this new service, I think it is just a red herring. Results are not going to change much either way, IMHO.

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  • Anonymous

    Initially, the biggest impact to B2B marketers is what you said. However, as time goes by and Google’s computers gather each buyer/specifier’s personalized searching habits, keywords used, and results chosen, I believe you will see more quality hits/conversions directly through your web site vs the middlemen industrial verticals. It is important, now, to implement many of Jacob Nielsen’s “Useability” suggestions, no matter what happens, to increase conversions to sales.Someone on Nettlesome Network posted a link to “Evolution of a Search Engine” done by a “Google Expert”. It has some interesting predictions on Personalization, and assumptions as to how Artificial Intelligence will affect online search (mostly referencing B2C for now).http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-02-02-n25.htmlDave, I go back to 1995 in studying how online seach has affected the B2B marketers. It has always been that B2C gets first priority and discussion due to, I think, the fact that more people relate to it, and the fact that there is more advertising/marketing money in it for search engines, publishers and agencies. But, eventually, B2B is affected by many (not all) of the things that affect B2C. Besides “double meaning” B2B keywords being helped, just think of all the unique aspects of your company’s products/services that could be found through online personalized search (once enough time has gone by for personalization data to be gathered through the buyer’s many sourcing attempts and choices). Keep in mind that there are also many double and triple meaning words in the English vocabulary that are not unique to B2B, but can affect B2B search.Your right about the “privacy issue”, but the bottom line for that will be “Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks?” The amount of change in the search results will still be determined as they do today by the quality and quantity of the keywords the buyers enter. But, Personalization and AI could bring more quality results on the 1st SERP related to the intent of the buyer/specifier with less clicks to get to the exact info he wants (maybe even pricing info – big smiley face).Only time will tell.

  • Anonymous

    Initially, the biggest impact to B2B marketers is what you said. However, as time goes by and Google’s computers gather each buyer/specifier’s personalized searching habits, keywords used, and results chosen, I believe you will see more quality hits/conversions directly through your web site vs the middlemen industrial verticals. It is important, now, to implement many of Jacob Nielsen’s “Useability” suggestions, no matter what happens, to increase conversions to sales.Someone on Nettlesome Network posted a link to “Evolution of a Search Engine” done by a “Google Expert”. It has some interesting predictions on Personalization, and assumptions as to how Artificial Intelligence will affect online search (mostly referencing B2C for now).http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2007-02-02-n25.htmlDave, I go back to 1995 in studying how online seach has affected the B2B marketers. It has always been that B2C gets first priority and discussion due to, I think, the fact that more people relate to it, and the fact that there is more advertising/marketing money in it for search engines, publishers and agencies. But, eventually, B2B is affected by many (not all) of the things that affect B2C. Besides “double meaning” B2B keywords being helped, just think of all the unique aspects of your company’s products/services that could be found through online personalized search (once enough time has gone by for personalization data to be gathered through the buyer’s many sourcing attempts and choices). Keep in mind that there are also many double and triple meaning words in the English vocabulary that are not unique to B2B, but can affect B2B search.Your right about the “privacy issue”, but the bottom line for that will be “Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks?” The amount of change in the search results will still be determined as they do today by the quality and quantity of the keywords the buyers enter. But, Personalization and AI could bring more quality results on the 1st SERP related to the intent of the buyer/specifier with less clicks to get to the exact info he wants (maybe even pricing info – big smiley face).Only time will tell.

  • Dave J.

    Thanks Anon. I was tempted to link back to a post I did last year titled < HREF="http://www.b2blog.com/2006/03/fix-google-please.htm" REL="nofollow">Fix Google<> that decried the stagnation of search technology.While personalization and AI have promise, I don’t see them as particularly revolutionary. There’s got to be a better way.And when are the directories going to stop considering themselves middle-men between Google and us vendors? There is a whole world of value they can offer if the concentrate on attracting an audience instead of waiting until someone searches. That was conclusion of the presentation I gave at InfoCommerce 2005.

  • Dave J.

    that decried the stagnation of search technology.While personalization and AI have promise, I don’t see them as particularly revolutionary. There’s got to be a better way.And when are the directories going to stop considering themselves middle-men between Google and us vendors? There is a whole world of value they can offer if the concentrate on attracting an audience instead of waiting until someone searches. That was conclusion of the presentation I gave at InfoCommerce 2005.

  • Anonymous

    Dave, did you hear about this, hopefully soon to be, open source search engine from the makers of Wikipedia?http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/23/wikipedia-to-launch-searchengine-exclusive-screenshot/The directories/verticals will always have sourcing information as their primary business. You’re right that “added value” is the way to go, but they all, evidently, don’t want to keep investing the big bucks it would take to keep doing it right. I suspect that all the upper management and the owners fear that their time is limited due to search engine dominance and increasing competition. If I missed your complete presentation at InfoCommerce 2005, can you put a link to it here?

  • Anonymous

    Dave, did you hear about this, hopefully soon to be, open source search engine from the makers of Wikipedia?http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/12/23/wikipedia-to-launch-searchengine-exclusive-screenshot/The directories/verticals will always have sourcing information as their primary business. You’re right that “added value” is the way to go, but they all, evidently, don’t want to keep investing the big bucks it would take to keep doing it right. I suspect that all the upper management and the owners fear that their time is limited due to search engine dominance and increasing competition. If I missed your complete presentation at InfoCommerce 2005, can you put a link to it here?

  • Dave J.

    I have heard about the Wikia search engine but haven’t looked at it. Someone is going to do Google one better, I think.You can get the PDF of my presentation for a short time < HREF="http://www.b2blog.com/files/google_rules.pdf" REL="nofollow">here<>.

  • Anonymous

    Thanks for the PDF, Dave. Now I know why David Shaw said “We have a customer willing to tell us how he evaluates our media, and the majority of attendees at the conference weren’t there.” It now makes sense to me along with you saying “..it (the PDF) has some real traffic numbers, I don’t want to publish it here.”

  • Anonymous

    Thanks for the PDF, Dave. Now I know why David Shaw said “We have a customer willing to tell us how he evaluates our media, and the majority of attendees at the conference weren’t there.” It now makes sense to me along with you saying “..it (the PDF) has some real traffic numbers, I don’t want to publish it here.”

  • Dave J.

    You’re welcome. File has been deleted now. If anyone else wants it, please email me.

  • Dave J.

    You’re welcome. File has been deleted now. If anyone else wants it, please email me.

  • Andy Black

    Will Social Networks and Vertical Search combine to challenge Google?Publishers and advertising agencies have a very difficult challenge ahead as traditional “horizontal” media like newspapers, TV channels and magazines see their traditional demographics and advertising revenue streams fragmented by the increasing preference of consumers for online access and the huge presence of Google eroding their audiences and potential future revenues. Perhaps they should remember the words of Sun Tsu, who once said: “When the enemy is too strong to attack directly, then attack something he holds dear. Know that in all things he cannot be superior. Somewhere there is a gap in the armour, a weakness that can be attacked instead.”Google’s major strength – the clean search box and the ease of use, commoditised ad revenues, perhaps masks its principal weakness. As media content and advertising revenues fragment to serve thousands and thousands of “vertical” online communities based on lifestyle or profession, Google may suddenly seem standardised, commoditised and lacking a sense of unique community. Is Google becoming Wal-Mart, while vertical communities may prefer Harrods? Whilst “horizontal” media companies are similar to supermarkets, specialist professional “vertical” publishers are very specific in serving niche communities with totally relevant content and requirements. However, the publisher’s principal operating difficulty in becoming adaptive to this asymmetric Web 2.0 opportunity is that most tend to run each of their print, exhibition and online titles/businesses as separate profit and loss items on their balance sheet. As a by-product the vast majority tend not to have a centralised IT infrastructure or the human IT skill sets to manage a large scale data centre or web spidering facility – the prerequisites needed to datamine and aggregate open source, user generated and blog content to create vertical slices of the Web that are relevant for their audiences. Publishers will also need to integrate this content into the online extensions of their print brands and thereby allowing advertisers the opportunity to target high value communities. In addition, the datamining, crawling and hosting to identify relevant open source content will also need to be a continual process due to the continual growth of user generated and open source content. Convera have two very large data centres, an extensive web spidering capability and a web index. Convera are now partnering with a significant number of specialist B2B publishers to create a range of vertical websites for specific professional communities. The first example of this is Searchmedica.com with UBM. In building the deep vertical search portals, the key is to reach into the specific professional community in a number of ways. First, you can combined the trade publisher’s knowledge and contacts in the profession with community appeals that engage the specific audience in a way that general search cannot, and also by taking special care to use the taxonomies common to the targeted profession in organizing search results so that the user feels more at home and among peers. Building a good vertical engine can be costly and time consuming, and getting a critical mass of users to de-Google their search habits into more specialized engines is potentially a tough sell. However, in tests with focus groups from different professional communities to test these vertical search properties against Google, the results are hugely encouraging. In building the beta test sites, the specialist publishers are providing Convera with “white lists” of data sources online and websites that would be most relevant to its readers so that the searches are restricted to reliable and trusted information. Publishers are also securing agreements with owners of key proprietary content not normally crawled by Google by leveraging some of its contacts and resources so that Convera can crawl and deliver some of their proprietary content.Another key consideration is getting the user community engaged in the process as co-developers. No matter how bad the results at Google or Yahoo may be for a given professional segment, the interface is familiar and the destination is always at hand. Getting users to think of a specialized brand as the go-to place for business information is the challenge. A number of publishers are actively assessing the potential of adding social networking to the mix in order to get professionals interacting with each other and adding weekly podcasts by industry experts on issues affecting the community – these additional services will create more community loyalty and also additional advertising and sponsorship opportunities. The publishers can also use their print titles to drive the audience to the new online areas and this will also assist the transition of their high value print ad revenues to online. Publishers also have exhibitions, seminars, events and email newsletters to assist this transition – and recent research suggests that professional communities will actively attend seminars and events to meet peers and other membersof their community. The theory goes that once you get some professionals involved then the viral mechanism or behavioural “Hive Mind” also kicks in and professional workers start referring to the vertical portal as a community source. It is also allows advertisers and public relations organisations access to a clearly defined, affluent, influential and stable audience. Google does not allow you to have a beer with a potential business partner – it doesn’t have that sense of community. But Google is fighting back – the recent launch of Google Custom Search and acquisition of teenage social network sites indicates they are aware of their weakness – but specialist publishers see this as a Trojan Horse. Social networks for teenagers are highly transient and target a demographic that is volatile, unpredictable and has a low level of disposable income – whereas a social network alongside a vertical search service for 22,000 bio-chemists, 55,000 UK GP’s, 55,000 insurance risk assessors or 120,000 US psychiatrists is stable, affluent and attractive for advertisers.

  • Andy Black

    Will Social Networks and Vertical Search combine to challenge Google?Publishers and advertising agencies have a very difficult challenge ahead as traditional “horizontal” media like newspapers, TV channels and magazines see their traditional demographics and advertising revenue streams fragmented by the increasing preference of consumers for online access and the huge presence of Google eroding their audiences and potential future revenues. Perhaps they should remember the words of Sun Tsu, who once said: “When the enemy is too strong to attack directly, then attack something he holds dear. Know that in all things he cannot be superior. Somewhere there is a gap in the armour, a weakness that can be attacked instead.”Google’s major strength – the clean search box and the ease of use, commoditised ad revenues, perhaps masks its principal weakness. As media content and advertising revenues fragment to serve thousands and thousands of “vertical” online communities based on lifestyle or profession, Google may suddenly seem standardised, commoditised and lacking a sense of unique community. Is Google becoming Wal-Mart, while vertical communities may prefer Harrods? Whilst “horizontal” media companies are similar to supermarkets, specialist professional “vertical” publishers are very specific in serving niche communities with totally relevant content and requirements. However, the publisher’s principal operating difficulty in becoming adaptive to this asymmetric Web 2.0 opportunity is that most tend to run each of their print, exhibition and online titles/businesses as separate profit and loss items on their balance sheet. As a by-product the vast majority tend not to have a centralised IT infrastructure or the human IT skill sets to manage a large scale data centre or web spidering facility – the prerequisites needed to datamine and aggregate open source, user generated and blog content to create vertical slices of the Web that are relevant for their audiences. Publishers will also need to integrate this content into the online extensions of their print brands and thereby allowing advertisers the opportunity to target high value communities. In addition, the datamining, crawling and hosting to identify relevant open source content will also need to be a continual process due to the continual growth of user generated and open source content. Convera have two very large data centres, an extensive web spidering capability and a web index. Convera are now partnering with a significant number of specialist B2B publishers to create a range of vertical websites for specific professional communities. The first example of this is Searchmedica.com with UBM. In building the deep vertical search portals, the key is to reach into the specific professional community in a number of ways. First, you can combined the trade publisher’s knowledge and contacts in the profession with community appeals that engage the specific audience in a way that general search cannot, and also by taking special care to use the taxonomies common to the targeted profession in organizing search results so that the user feels more at home and among peers. Building a good vertical engine can be costly and time consuming, and getting a critical mass of users to de-Google their search habits into more specialized engines is potentially a tough sell. However, in tests with focus groups from different professional communities to test these vertical search properties against Google, the results are hugely encouraging. In building the beta test sites, the specialist publishers are providing Convera with “white lists” of data sources online and websites that would be most relevant to its readers so that the searches are restricted to reliable and trusted information. Publishers are also securing agreements with owners of key proprietary content not normally crawled by Google by leveraging some of its contacts and resources so that Convera can crawl and deliver some of their proprietary content.Another key consideration is getting the user community engaged in the process as co-developers. No matter how bad the results at Google or Yahoo may be for a given professional segment, the interface is familiar and the destination is always at hand. Getting users to think of a specialized brand as the go-to place for business information is the challenge. A number of publishers are actively assessing the potential of adding social networking to the mix in order to get professionals interacting with each other and adding weekly podcasts by industry experts on issues affecting the community – these additional services will create more community loyalty and also additional advertising and sponsorship opportunities. The publishers can also use their print titles to drive the audience to the new online areas and this will also assist the transition of their high value print ad revenues to online. Publishers also have exhibitions, seminars, events and email newsletters to assist this transition – and recent research suggests that professional communities will actively attend seminars and events to meet peers and other membersof their community. The theory goes that once you get some professionals involved then the viral mechanism or behavioural “Hive Mind” also kicks in and professional workers start referring to the vertical portal as a community source. It is also allows advertisers and public relations organisations access to a clearly defined, affluent, influential and stable audience. Google does not allow you to have a beer with a potential business partner – it doesn’t have that sense of community. But Google is fighting back – the recent launch of Google Custom Search and acquisition of teenage social network sites indicates they are aware of their weakness – but specialist publishers see this as a Trojan Horse. Social networks for teenagers are highly transient and target a demographic that is volatile, unpredictable and has a low level of disposable income – whereas a social network alongside a vertical search service for 22,000 bio-chemists, 55,000 UK GP’s, 55,000 insurance risk assessors or 120,000 US psychiatrists is stable, affluent and attractive for advertisers.