I recently posted about Google Personalising Search, and commented on the unknown impacts that this may have. This along with Google’s site speed announcement are signs that Google are changing the way we search and these changes are likely to change our SEO approach. In order to combat the effects of this we need to be ahead of the game.

User Interface is something that didn’t really have much impact on Search Engine rankings, for example a site with a fairly poor design could be number one for a term purely through links and on page SEO. However I firmly believe that in order for a website to succeed it needs a good User Interface. User Interface is the backbone to success online, after all no matter how much traffic a site has, if that traffic does not convert, it is a wasted effort.

The personalisation of search has meant that websites with a good design and User Interface are more likely to benefit. An example of a site that provides a great user experience is Amazon. They have a great User Interface and have devoted time to developing it, they also have their own personalisation features to make it a more bespoke experience for the user. A user will go to Amazon because they know they can navigate it with ease. This means that Amazon is likely to get repeat customers, which in turn is likely to affect the position that Amazon appears in the SERP’s when Google’s web history is turned on.

Matt Cutts announced at PubCon that Google will be using site speed as a ranking factor in 2010, but just how much of an impact this will have on the ranking algorithm is still not known.

Google have even supplied tools to allow you to check your site speed and suggest changes, you can find them at Let’s make the web faster

Another area which can help you benefit is branding, purely because the more well known you are the more likely a user is going to go to your website again and again. There are many ways in which you can brand your website, one of these is social media and blogging. Twitter is a great tool to interact with customers and increase customer retention, often leading to repeat visits to your site. Blogging and RSS feeds allow users to interact and follow your posts which again can lead to repeat visits.

These repeat visits mean that Google will recognise that the user has visited your site before or several times before and therefore they must think your site is more personally relevant. This will mean that your website will appear higher in the SERP’s for that user. This is of course only likely if web history is turned on.

I still believe that Web History and the Google Caffeine update will not greatly affect a “normal” user, however I do believe that good User Interface coupled with great branding will give you that competitive edge which will allow you to benefit from Google’s recent and future changes.

The news about personalisation was not widely picked up on last Friday, perhaps due to the timing of other announcements about First Click Free, it does not mean that it should go unnoticed.

Many of you will have seen Google personalised search, which gives users a more personalised results page, even allowing you to remove certain results or bunk up others. Now personalisation is standard to all Google users, whether signed in or not! The only way out of it is to disable it by clicking the “Web History” tab at the top of Google and opting out.

But what does this mean for SEO?

Although I believe that Google have not fully rolled out personalisation and they are still collecting data before a lot of results will be personalised, the likelihood is that we will all experience some personalisation in some form or another in the future(of course Web History would have to be enabled), the weighting on the rankings however is yet to be known.

This however does not mean that SEO is changing! Yes if you did a product search,  for example lets use “Bose Headphones” you may find that your favourite online store Amazon appears more often and higher up in the search results. This makes perfect sense, because you obviously trust Amazon and frequently use amazon to purchase products, so why shouldn’t Google help you out? However for the majority of searches there is unlikely to be a difference is results from user to user. For example if you are in need of plumbing services and you search for a for a “plumber” in Google, the likelihood of you having previously visited a site in the past 180 days* related to “plumber” are very slim. Therefore the results will be unchanged.

*180 days is the longest Google will track your web history based on your browser search history.

In a nutshell, yes search is becoming more personalised, but for the majority of search terms the effects of this new feature is likely going to be very minimal.

Infoserve Provide a Google local guide which can help you claim your business listing