Letting the Market Decide on Personalized Search Results
There has been a lot of controversy, as of late, surrounding Google's personalized search. While many SEOers are rather upset about what this means for the industry, other are accepting that it is an inevitable fact that they must adapt to. While both Google and SEOers have a vested interest in whether or not personalized search flourishes, it is only up to the market to decide. As far as SEOers are concerned, then, they may better be served by discussing how to adapt rather than complaining about how they have to.
Personalized search has been available for some time, but on Feb. 2nd, Google ramped it up. As SEO Book repined:
In the past they typically placed a turn off personalized results whenever your results were personalized, but now they do not disclose when they are personalizing the results, so you don't know when they changed, which sucks.
Although the consumers were not stuck with personalized results, it was neither obvious that results were being personalized, nor how to deactivated them. As Search Engine Land explained on Feb. 2nd:
Starting today, anyone who signs-up for any Google service using a Google Account (such as Gmail, AdSense, Google Analytics among others) will automatically be enrolled into three additional Google products:Search History Personalized Search Personalized Homepage
You can override the decision to have Search History enabled, but honestly, you'll need sharp eyes. I completely missed that this was added as a default choice to the new account sign-up page. In fact, I missed it twice, as I tested the system by making two different accounts.
The reason that Google has probably made deactivating the personalized search option so difficult is that they need to (1) justify the demand so that they can (2) gradually perfect the algorithm. Granted, this is scarcely an upfront way to go about. However, whether or not Google has something to gain from it, they obviously feel that personalized search enhances the user experience and is, therefore, the future of search.
If personalized search results are indeed the future of search, even though they threaten the SEO industry as it is currently known, it may not threaten its very existence. Reflecting on the issue from the standpoint of an average (re non SEO savvy) user, Gord Hotchkiss writes:
SEO is, and will continue to be, vitally important as long as organic search results continue to be important to the user. [...] But, organic optimization now has a completely new rule set, which will irritate the hell out of many organic optimizers.
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Personalization is being implemented because it enhances the user experience. It doesn't take a "Rocket Scientist" (sorry, couldn't resist) to see that one set of search results is not the best way to serve millions of users.