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Searching For Answers

 

Online Marketing

Personal search is about each web user getting a different set of search results, even if they are using the same search terms. Search engines will slowly begin to understand search behaviours, geographical location and personal preferences to provide each web user with a different SERP (search engine results page).

Although the benefits of personal search are immediately clear for the average web user, personal search is likely to devastate SEO experts, as they will no longer be able to count on Google ranking as a way of determining search engine success or failure. Instead, SEO will need to adapt to be measured solely by traffic and conversions.

The days of SEO experts telling clients that their website is on page one for Google are numbered. Clients will want to know how many visitors can be turned into qualified business opportunities.

Google’s SearchWiki is moving in this direction. SearchWiki innovatively allows each web user to shift search results based on what they think is important. Unwanted search results may also be removed from the SERP altogether. Active web users may also use SearchWiki to add links to the SERP that they think are missing. SearchWiki also provides the search community with an area for public comments. Here web users are free to leave comments based on search results. For example, if one web user feels that a particular link is the most relevant, he/she may leave a comment that lets others know, saving future browsers a lot of time and effort.

Some experts feel that personal search is an invasion of privacy; whilst others believe having humans do the work makes the results more relevant. Either way, personal search is the future.

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