“The top position is no longer winner-take-all,” Bryan Horling, a Google software engineer in charge of Personalized Search, told the SMX West audience in Santa Clara California. After a decade of trying to claim that prize, that may or may not be good news to some.
(Coverage of Murdok Videos. Keep an eye on Murdok for more notes and videos from the event this week.)
Horling spoke to a crowd looking to get a better understanding of personalized search and Google’s SearchWiki, launched last November, which allows users to customize and comment on Google search results. When logged into their personal accounts, users can move results up or down or remove them altogether.
That’s potentially bad news for webmasters who’ve earned or gamed their way to the top of the results, and probably very good news for those unable to crack the result that gets the vast majority of click-throughs and visibility.
The reasoning behind the feature is fairly obvious: Not one result works for everybody. This SMX session was opened with a Google search for “smx,” a prime example of the ambiguity associated with search. Results bring back the conference at the top of course—this is an SEO/SEM conference—and even the second result, but some users may be looking for the Santa Maria Airport (SMX on their ticket), or for Smithway Motor Xpress for freight trucking.
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