Google to focus on personalized search—how will this affect SEO?

Google said that it is planning to work on personalizing search queries. The search engine will provide custom searches based on an individual’s search history. While the plan has certain benefits, most experts see that it may limit search results—affecting the performance of new search engine campaigns.

Personalizing search results will change search engine optimization (SEO) dynamics. It could possibly disregard SEO value in favor of the user’s most frequently visited sites.

“This might restrict the breadth of sites that are delivered to the user leading searchers to only see sources of information that they typically agree with, which deals with cognitive dissonance in a detrimental way for society at large,” explained Andreas Pouros, chief operating officer at Greenlight. “Consider how this might affect search results for Barack Obama if he searched for ‘health care reform’ or Al Gore if he searched for ‘climate change’.”

Pouros goes on to say: “One of the great benefits of the Internet was that it would allow for a multitude of sites to be presented to a user, broadening his/her horizons and forcing him/her to question their positions and beliefs. Search, philosophically at least, should accentuate that and not diminish it.”

Implementing a personalized search query will kill online startup companies, which have yet to strengthen their place on the search engine market. They will start on a market on a disadvantage.

Source: PCWorld