One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

The search results that you see within your browser are not the same as the others, each person is seeing different results. This is because those magic elves that place links on Google’s results pages knows that not everyone is that same and they customize your search results to better fit your needs. These personalized searches are created by multiple factors and from these sources, Google provides you with more relevant searches and gets you to the page you are looking for.

What affects my search results?

There are many factors that go into personalizing your search results, but here are some of the top ones:

Location

Google knows where you sleep. They also know where you work, go to school, and where you go on your weekends.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this:


This is the location data Google has collected on me for the past 30 days.

Of course, I have an Android phone and take Google everywhere I go, but have a look here and find out if Google already knows what you did last weekend:
https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0

This precise location data allows Google to give you information based on your current location as well as the places you have visited in the past.

If you are not connected to Google via a mobile device, it will get your location based off your IP address of your internet connection. It may not be as precise as GPC, but it gives them the general area you are located.

This location data is used to help you find information on nearby restaurants or other local businesses. These custom results are very helpful to the user, but in my tests they caused the biggest fluctuation of the rankings.

You will also see local results from a couple different sources. One source is the content on your site. Google will look for the best content based on the location and the search query. These results will show up in the regular organic results (see the blue highlighted listings above).

There are still a section of local listings grouped within the search results. This data comes from Google My Business listings and finds local businesses near your location and places them on a map to help you find a store near you.

Search History

Google tracks the different terms that you search for to help understand the context of your search. Google first announced personalized search way back in 2005, which used your personal search history to influence your results. This was only available to users that had a Google account.

Then four years later, in 2009, Google announced that it was giving personalized search to everyone whether they were signed into their Google account or not.

 So you can see that Google remembers your other recent searches. The image below shows the same search query for ‘JavaScript,’ but you can see personalized results on the right based on previous searches.

In the search on the right I searched for ‘Programming Textbooks’ and ‘Books on HTML’ before I searched ‘JavaScript’. This changed the results by bringing in three book listings that were not on the original set of results at all.

Web History

If you are signed into a Google account and use Chrome or the Google Toolbar, your web history is being collected and stored in a vast Google data center somewhere. Google uses this web history to learn what kind of sites you like and base your search results on this.

When testing this, I saw Twitter rise in the rankings over Facebook since I tend to visit Twitter more often. Otherwise, I didn’t see any major changes.

Google+

When you create a Google+ account, you give Google a lot of demographic data on yourself including your age, sex, where you live, other places you used to live, where you work, who your friends are, what your favorite 80’s TV show is (mine is Misfits of Science).

You would think they would use this demographic data to target you, but during my tests I didn’t see any clear indications of this. The only major changes I saw based on Google+ was the additions of reviews or ratings by people I have in my circles.

I moved to Seattle about the same time that Johnathon Colman moved to California, but I have been followed by his ghost ever since. I have Johnathon in my Google+ circles and because of that he shows up every time I’m looking for local businesses.

I didn’t notice any of these reviews making changes in the position of the rankings, but they do make the site listing more visible which would likely increase the click through rate of that listing.

What does this mean to me?

There is no consistent search experience because of personalization. This means that you can track the keyword rankings for your site using generic non-personalized search results, but they don’t match up 1:1 to what your customers are seeing. It’s still OK to track your keywords, but you need to realize that it is not giving you the full picture of what is going on in the wild. You need to use these ranking to see how you are trending, not what place a specific keyword is ranking for this week.

When you are trying to increase the rankings of your site, it is best to take a holistic approach and include onsite and offsite optimization, localization, and social visibility. All of these factor into your rankings and will help you increase your search visibility in personalized and non-personalized search results.

The post Guide to Personalized Search Results appeared first on Portent.

This commercial was one of the first to demonstrate the power and universal influence of search. By having your consumer access your site through a keyword search you increase your sites traffic strength, branding, and likelihood of getting personalized search preference for all of those users that visit your site from the Google SERPs.

This strategy carries over to almost every aspect of our lives as “Googling” has become a daily activity and most consumers don’t remember URLs but rather brands and keywords.
For example, I’ve been noticing that video games hide Easter eggs that require you to search online for specific keywords that lead you to sites created by the game developers.

In the game Batman: Arkham Asylum, the PA system is blasting a message about visiting them online at www.arkhamcare.com or by searching arkham care. It doesn’t endorse any search engine or browser; searching for those keywords works on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! No engine specific instructions required. Other internet add-ons for the game include: http://www.gothamcitydigital.com/login.php and http://www.gothamcitymunicipal.com/ (Unfortunately, no longer working). Information on how much traffic these sites have gotten is, as of yet, unknown. But I’ve got an email in to the listed webmasters and I’ll let you know more when I find out.
According to various sources two million copies of the game were sold in the first three weeks after release on consoles. Now, let’s assume 1 in 10 of those players visit just one of the three websites. That’s 200,000 visitors and 199,999 more visitors than my site (HI MOM!). 200,000 visitors isn’t half bad.

In both Mass Effect 1 & 2, Elevator PA announcements and random advertisements to search the “Extranet” popup throughout the game. The most common occurrence I can remember (without going and playing the games for a week) is the story about Alliance soldiers who gave their lives defending Eden Prime. At the end of the stories, the announcer says, “For more information go to the “Extranet” and search keyword courage.” Unfortunately, for those thousands of us that spammed Google with “courage” in the first week of Mass Effect’s release, there was no “Extranet” site for us to visit. Instead we were greeted by Wikipedia, dictionary.com, and a picture of the most bad-ass penguin in known existence.

How BioWare and every other internet marketer in the world passed up this opportunity is pretty startling. Granted it’s got to be really hard to rank number one for “courage”, but a 10 ranking or a PPC listing would have had you on page one and every search by a Mass Effect player would have been another set of very curious eyes poking around your website.

The more amazing benefit is that you likely would have been the only one! The number of links and mentions your site/brand would have garnered could have likely propelled you to at least a #4 rank for a keyword with 68,200,000 competing sites. Odds are you could have gone on to create the promised “Extranet” and provided gamers with a Mass Effect search engine. But that’s just idle speculation and very likely a serious trademark issue.
The moral of the story here is that gamers are engaged. Very engaged. And they’re willing to hop on to the Internet and poke around a site if it means they get more out of their gaming experience. Creating the environment to enhance their gaming experience not only builds brand recognition, but buzz and community. Remember when you first found out you could “warp” through the entire first Super Mario Brothers game through a series of tubes? You told everyone or someone told you and you immediately ran home to try it.

So then, the challenge to the game makers isn’t just staying up to date with the games coming out, but having to make a website in a short period of time, and creating a following out of thin air based off something you have virtually no control over. But isn’t that what most of us get paid to do anyway?

The post Personalized Search Strategies & Video Games appeared first on Portent.