Personalized
Search Versus Personal Choice
Personalized search is a hot topic especially since Yahoo! and Microsoft
have announced they are aggressively developing this service. Most likely,
people will be leery of personalized search if they think that this is just be another way for companies to market to them. Search
engine research has shown that there are typically two types of searchers:
information seekers and buyers.
Information Seekers
If personalized search is to work for the information seekers, then instead
of lots of targeted marketing, the personalized search experience had better
offer targeted information that the person can use. A better information search
experience without having to bypass a slew of commercial sites would appeal to
the information seeker.
Buyers
What if you already have the information you need or don't want any
information, but just want to make an online purchase? For buyers,
information-only sites are something to be by-passed in the SERP's.
If personalized search can deliver the products and services the buyer wants,
and not just what the marketers want to push before them, then buyers may find
some value in personalized search.
Personal Choice
Personalized search must involve personal choice if it is to succeed. The
Big Brother and privacy issues need to be held to a minimum. Personalized
search needs to be an option that can easily be turned on and off as desired.
Personalized search should not be equated with limited choices. The person
needs to feel that they are in control and not the search engines. They also
need to see real personal value in using this service.
What if a person is sometimes an information seeker and other times a buyer,
or in the matter of seconds they switch hats? How will personalized search
accommodate this person? Will the person have to toggle back and forth between
a couple of different user profiles or click on and
off a checkbox to switch between these two different forms of search? These are
questions the SE's will have to address in personalization.
Google
Google has a beta personalized search engine at: http://labs.google.com/personalized/profile.html
that is pretty interesting to test. You're told to click on Health, then the
General Health checkbox and search for "stanford."
When searching for the word "bob" instead of "stanford" at the Minimum Personalize setting the first
three results are "Bob the Builder," "Bob Marley" and
"Bob Dylan". The rest of this page has no health related information
on it as well. But, when the slider is pulled to Maximum Personalize, "Dr.
Bob" has the first two positions followed the other results mentioned
above. Its obvious Google has a ways to go in developing this.
Personal Privacy
If personalized search is to succeed, then personal privacy issues need to
be addressed and concerns held to a minimum. Will personalized search involve
searching your hard drive to see what your interests are? Will your interests
be stored in a cookie on your computer? What happens when multiple users share
a computer - will someone else get hit with all sorts of Preparation H
advertisements because of the hemorrhoid treatment searches you wanted to keep private?
And will children be affected by adult personalized searches?
These are all questions that the SE's need to address so that people do not
feel that their privacy is being violated or put at risk. The more control and
choice the user has over personalized search the more likely it has in
succeeding for the search engines.
Copyright © 2004 SEO Resource
Kevin Kantola is the CEO of SEO Resource, a
Source: http://www.ezinearticles.com