Google gets personal

There are some obvious things happening with Google such as the 'Show options..' link at the top of the page which makes some of the old 'Advanced search' features much easier to use. It also adds new features such as the 'wonder wheel'.

Other things are more subtle because Google is changing the way it ranks pages.

Once upon a time I could type a term like ‘e-conveyancing’ into Google and know that a page from our newsletter archive (http://www.textor.com/e-conveyancing.html ) would come up fourth. I have used this page as a research vehicle for search engine optimisation (SEO) and it has consistently been coming fourth for some time. If you do a search it will be... fourth.

A simple statement of fact you might think. However it is not a statement I can continue to make with a lot of confidence because in future the position of this page for this keyword is likely to be different for different people. Google is attempting to give you the very best search results based on what it knows about you, and people like you.

What does Google know about you?

If you are logged in as a Google user, say you use gmail or have the Google toolbar, then Google knows quite a lot about you from your previous search behaviour. If not, then it has to go by the searches you have done in that session and your location, language setting and even browser.

The Google personalisation technology is the subject of a patent they took out in 2003. I wouldn’t recommend reading this unless you are really serious about finding out the detail. But there is a handy summary produced by SEO by the Sea. Incidentally this website regularly analyses patents granted by Google. Although the patent is old, it looks like these ideas are only now being implemented - but a lot of development will have been made since 2003.

The personalisation technology described in the patent application is based around the idea of groups of people. This could be as general as ‘searchers in London’ or ‘middle-aged males with an interest in conveyancing’. Some of the information may come from your location as determined by your web address, some may come from information you entered when you registered with Google and some might come from search behaviour.

Having determined your most relevant group, Google then knows what web pages tend to come up more frequently in searches by this group; what pages tend to be clicked and the sources of pages that tend to be supplied. So if ‘middle-aged males with an interest in conveyancing’ often do searches which result in land registry pages being returned, and they often click on them, then Land Registry pages will tend to be returned in a high position for searches on, say, house purchase, whereas the average punter might be getting pages from solicitors.

Google is also working on advertising. Up to now, the ads you see are simply determined by the keywords you typed in. If you type in ‘conveyancing’ you get ads from people who have purchases that keyword. The positioning of the ads is partially randomised and partially depending on the bid that the advertiser has made and the click-through rate they are achieving. A higher click-through rate means they get a better position.

In future however the ads you see will also be related to the web pages you have visited. Google knows this from previous searches you have made and which of the search results or ads you clicked on.

That is not the end of it. When you start typing keywords into Google, you notice suggestions being given to you in a drop-down below the search box. These suggestions may in the future also be biased towards your history or your group.

Is the sky falling in?

Does this change search engine optimisation?

I don’t think it does. You can still find out the position of a web page for a search term, you just have to be very careful about testing. You need to clear all your browser history, clear any cookies, use a standard browser, and load the browser afresh for each search.

So when you do a test you need to make sure the conditions are completely sterile and standardised. A chemist would not find this a surprising statement, whereas some SEO gurus are talking about the sky falling in.

The problem arises when a customer has paid for search engine or pay per click optimisation, and they see different results from their SEO consultant.
This needs to be explained to the client – which may or may not be easy. Now is perhaps a good time to start working on them.

From my blog

The emporers new cloud

I just sent out a newsletter coving the jargon du jour – Cloud Computing. I missed this classic for inclusion in the mailout. It is Larry Ellison on the subject. Quote

” The interesting thing about cloud computing – it is either going to be or already is the most important computing architecture in the world because we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we currently do. So it has already achieved dominance in the industry – I can’t think of anything that isn’t cloud computing with all of these announcements.

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

Go Larry!

Pay per tweet

Pay Per Tweet was an April Fool joke only a year ago. Now it is a business. Isn’t the Internet wunnerful.

With a blindingly simple idea Magpie are doing something with twitter, that twitter are not – making money. Sign up with them, and they insert an ad in your twitter stream. You choose the frequency and get paid accordingly.

News from the Internet

People will have to pay for news content, says Rupert Murdoch. Users are used to getting everything for nothing. This will have to change. This comes round on about a three year cycle. The New York Times tried charging for content, but ended up dropping it - there are just too many free news sources. To charge for news, I think a publication has to have a readerhip that is very insensitive on price and must have very specialised content. In the newspaper world this means the Wall St Journal and Financial Times, both of which sell to business readers. I don't see any others. Things may change when we can download the newspaper onto our e-reader every morning before we trot off to work.

A new version of bluetooth was launched last month. It will be a while before we see products in the shops of course. It uses the same communications protocol as your wi fi, so Bluetooth 3 will be much faster than version 2 and can be used for bulk transfers of data or for video. It will allow mobile phones and for that matter netbooks to interface wirelessly with a wider range of external devices - see this Nokia video to see how this might work.

The founders of stumbleupon sold the compaby to eBay two years ago for $75million. Now they are buying it back. We don't know how much they paid.

There were rumours that the founders of Skype wanted to buy it back from eBay. This might be connected with stories that the Skype founders are trying to sell Joost. However it looks like Skype will be disposed of, but it will be a floatation instead.

All in all it looks like eBay have decided to stick to their very profitable knitting.

The EU began legal action against the UK over its failure to protect Internet users from Phorm. This is advertising technology being tested by BT. It monitors the browsing habits of BT Broadband users and serves up more relevant adverts. This is not some browser plugin - but was being done by BT without informing their customers. Nasty.

A video showing a chinese lady losing it when her partner refuses to buy her a car, then drives it up and down the showroom with people leaping out of the way, is causing debate in China.

Textor. Web Development for Designers. London.

You Design: We Deliver

In this issue