Personalization - The Death of SEO?

I've been reading a lot of news stories hyping the coming of "personalized search" to all of the search engines in the future. It appears to be the "next big thing" that the search engines are focusing on. Now, whether or not it will come to pass any time soon is anyone's guess, but let's suppose it came to fruition in the next 6-12 months. How will this affect our SEO efforts?

If each search is personalized to the user, based on the user's preferences and previous search history, then the serps for each person will very likely be quite different from every other person's search. Possibly not for all keywords, but for the more ambiguous phrases, this could be definitely be the case. So now, the number one ranking we've all worked so hard for, will only be a number one ranking for some people some of the time. It may be number 5,224 for your next door neighbor, and number 378 for his son, living in the same house.

With this kind of new search ability, will SEO survive? Will it then just be "luck of the draw"?

Just throwing this out there to see what people think.

That may be the case but the person who is going to get your site at number one is the one who has been searching for this type of item or information already

ie that person will be more targeted to what you are offering than his nieghbour who has been looking for things entirely different so your site ranks 5,224 for him.

What this means is that the traffic you get will maybe decrease but it will be a lot more targeted and likely to "buy" or whatever your objective is.

The only problem that comes to mind is that if you are selling widgets then when that person does his first search for widgets, based on his search history your sales site for widgets comes in at #2,364 and a site for travel information to the town where widgets were first invented comes up at #1 because he had previously looked at holidays in this area.

Just my thoughts, someone else probably will have the opposite viewpoint.

Absolutely not. In fact, personalisation will be even better for SEOs, at least those that don't deal excleusively with "algo du jour" type optimisation.

The fundamentals of SEO are simple:
1. Create good, keyword rich content.
2. Get good, related links with keywords.
3. Repeat.

If personalisation ever surfaces, the factors will be based, probably more than ever, on links and types of content. So those SEOs that focus on the two basics should win big. Those that think SEO is a chase links / spam / play games business will probably suffer. It just comes down to your personal strategies and methods, and what effect any chanegs have on that.

as i have preached all along...the only thing that we know for sure is that search technology will change...forever. the only lasting site strategy is good solid content...services...management...design...copywri ting...organization...support...products. make it accessible and informative and fresh. this will always be a winner in any search climate. also...relationships and networking are extremely important. basic stuff really. not tricks.

Personally I see too many holes in such a plan for it to become reality.

• If you've never searched for a given item before, and the engines are basing their results off past use, the margin of error in report would have to be extensive.
• If you searched frequently, how would you know if the results you were receiving for a new item were accurate, or if they simply reflected your past use?
• What if your kids spent half the day searching for video games warez sites on your computer, and you needed to search for something, aren't their habits going to weight your search? What about your wife's search habits?
• If you move to a new location or are issued a new IP Address, are all of your search habits lost? Do you have to totally rebuild your search database?
• Are they going to store all of that data on your computer? What if you clear the cache and cookies, or dump the hard drive isn't it all lost? You start over! Or...
• Are you going to be required to log-in, everytime you want to search for something quick? Maybe pay a small fee for using their services? Now that's an orignal thought!

You would, in this manner, create an engine whose performance was deemed unreliable on one's own computer. The results could not be perfected, even on your own computer, unless you were the sole user. Further, the engine's results could not be measured or compared by others, against your results, making it totally impossible to render any assessment upon their performance. I can see certain tendencies of a regional nature being of some benefit, and those are probably already in place, but breaking it down to each individual user is stretching things just a wee bit far!

30 years ago the idea of an 'internet' was 'stretching things'...
i dont think any of your points are anywhere near insurmountable. its more of a question of how much privacy a person is willing to give up. people have accounts all over the internet with personal information stored in them. why not a google account? out of town?...simply log in. not very difficult to imagine. multiple users?....can you say 'aol screen name'. log in each time?....i havent logged into seo-chat for months. pay for google?...i have always believed its a good possibility.