Web Earnings

One of the biggest webmaster gripes about Google has always been that they don’t show enough of the backlinks that exist on the web. There has always been a thought that this is because they don’t want to give away too much info - but now they are letting webmasters see exactly who links to them through the webmaster tools console, in the same way that it shows search queries, pagerank etc. If you haven’t got a webmaster tools account then you really need to get one, this info is actually quite useful! You still can’t see who links to your competitors so this isn’t a case of Google getting all transparent on us, but in terms of being able to better analyse your site, this is a great step forward. Loads more info can be found here, here and here

Ok, not quite a mind reader, but it was only a matter of time before Google stepped into the realms of trying to figure out what you really want rather than what you type. They have been slowly rolling out new features over the past months adding functionality such as local search to organic results, cinema times when you search for a film and the multiple ‘did  you mean’ features on a page (ok, that’s been around for a while) along with a plethora of other useful (or not so) feature.

Their latest step seems to be their personalized search giving you results based on your past searching history. Google’s official blog-man gives the example “For example, I (Sep) am an avid Miami Dolphins fan (no joke). Searching for [dolphins] gives me info about my favorite football team, while a marine biologist colleague gets more information about her salt-water friends.”

At first you won’t see much change but over time Google will learn what you search for, what you click on etc and tailor the results to your needs. My thoughts? As long as you can turn it off then it’s not a big problem. The fact that they’ve introduced this now suggests that they’ve been collating and aggregating personal search information for some time, which gives them immense marketing power. There will be some that say this is an infringement in their privacy.

My major thoughts are as follows. If you know what Google is doing then you have the option to turn it off so what’s the problem? Upon mentioning this to my colleagues however, I found that they didn’t even know about this new feature. All have google accounts and all were signed in, so had Google been collecting data and amending the search results without them being aware of this? My second gripe is that Google thinks it knows what I want but it doesn’t. If I search for car hire in Berlin, I DON’T want a map showing me where local car rental companies are located, what I actually want is UK companies that offer car hire from Berlin when I travel there (unfortunately I don’t speak German so would much rather carry out the booking in English). When I search for plumbers in Bristol I don’t want a list of local plumbers on a map, I don’t care where they are located as they will be travelling to me. I would rather get some information that I CAN’T find in the yellow pages such as customer reviews etc, so in terms of Google giving me the results they think I want, I simply don’t trust that they will.

It does however pose an interesting question for SEO, if everyone is seeing different search results, how do you know where you stand in the serps? Along with everything else that has been introduced in Google Land since the start of the year - this is a big step and will have huge implications in search. I’ve said it before but I think this will be a big year for Google.

Lots of mixed reactions in the SE world which you can read about here