Well, Google is at it again. In a much talked about move towards what the engine sees as the future, Google has unleashed its personalized search capabilities on the public. From a user perspective, this effort will aid the searcher by displaying the results that are most relevant based on previous search history. By staying logged into your Google account (gmail, adsense, Google analytics, etc) and using the search engine, Google is able to maintain a record of your search history. This record will contain previous web page searches, image searches, news headlines, and Froogle results Google will also be able to provide recommendations for other search results that you may find useful based on your history. Users will have the ability to remove items from their search history or gauge interesting trends regarding their search habits. Furthermore, the personalized search feature will allow users to create bookmarks that they will be able to access from any computer. So, how will this effect SEO? Should those of us working in search engine marketing start looking for new careers?

First things first, personalization will not kill SEO. Those in SEO know that in this industry, the only constant is change,so this development should not come as much of a shock despite many making it appear that way. If anything, personalization will bring SEO back into the realm of marketing, where we, as SEOs, will have to study user behaviors and user trends rather than just chasing an algorithm. Proper SEO techniques will hopefully, in the long run, bring more qualified and narrowed traffic to a site by coupling algorithmic trends with user trends, bettering the end result. The progression of personalization will make SEO an easier task in the essence that “black-hat” competition will have to work harder as the monolithic search result becomes a thing of the past. With that, we “white hatters” will work harder as we attempt to find the optimizations needed to rank well in front of the personalized, or local, audience that we need to be speaking to. Personalization brings to light the idea that we, as SEO’s, must plan further into the future when formulating optimization strategies.

There will be some difficulties to work through in trying to optimize websites for personalized search. Personalized search will cause search results to be shuffled and customized for each user. This could make it more difficult to determine the true ranking position of a given keyword for a specific website, simply because you won’t just have one ranking anymore – in fact, for some users, you may not have ANY rankings This could also make it more difficult to determine the competitive nature of keywords since results can be shuffled based on the user.

And how about trying to use optimization to capture an audience that may not be aware of a certain product or service – that doesn’t really have a search history related to certain topics? Don’t many people use search engines to find information on topics, products, etc. that they may not know much about? Will personalized search prove to limit a searcher’s “universe”? Time will tell as this feature evolves.

In the SEO world, one of the main indicators of success is traffic. Say, for instance, you as an advertiser aren’t getting the traffic you would like from the organic search results and you need to increase your visibility in order to do so. Without knowing exactly where you are positioned, as well as where your competition is positioned, you could be almost clueless as to where you should start and what measures you should take. These are just a few examples of the hurdles personalized search will have to jump in order to prove beneficial.

However, there are some positive attributes to personalized search as well. For example, if a user has a search history which contains the product or service that you, as an advertiser, are trying to optimize for, it is likely that your optimization efforts will generate a more qualified audience. And there is the potential that your site will compete against less pages for top spots in front of these users. In theory, this can help your rankings in front of a desirable audience. And the traffic that personalized search results will drive is likely to be more qualified.

So there are just some of the pros and cons to the new personalized search. It will be important for SEOs to stay on top of these trends and learn a new set of best practices for site optimization – both for a general audience, and now an audience that is hungry for personalized information. How quickly does a change in strategy need to happen? The fact is that in the short term, personalized search will need to first change searcher behavior. We have gotten used to a process where you open your browser, go to your most trusted or favorite engine, and begin entering search terms. Personalized search will require that a user is logged into their Google account while searching. And there will be those users who rebel against the whole concept of allowing a search engine to gather such behavior patterns from them. That being said, there will also be the early adopters, who are probably already logged into their Google account and trending their search patterns.

Time will tell if personalized search is, in fact, the next step in the evolution of search. Has Google done it again, or will this be swept under the rug, soon to be forgotten? It’s too early in the game to be certain. One thing’s certain for sure, though: we can’t blame Google for trying.