Key Points

One of the hot areas in search is personalization. Google recognizes that personalization is a way to offer people better search results. How this works has a big impact on SEO, and I had the opportunity arise to speak with Jack Menzel and jumped at it. Here are some of the key points from the discussion:

1. People confuse context with personalization, and these are different things. Context includes factors such as language, location, and time of year.
2. (Jack:) “A lot of people assume personalization is amazingly pervasive”. In fact only small changes are made to a results page based on personalization. Google recognizes for diverse query results.
3. Past query history is used for personalization. If you search for “rome”, and then “hotels”, some of the results will be for hotels in Rome.
4. Past click through history is a factor. If you show a clear preference for one site by clicking on it in the results, then it may be moved up in the results for you.
5. The recommendations of friends are used in personalization.
6. Google will look at your friend’s profile to see what networks they have included there, and then see what they recommend on those sites.
7. (Jack): “When people are signed out, their search results are personalized based on past search information linked to their browser for up to 180 days using an anonymous cookie”.
8. Appending &pws=0 to the end of a URL does work, but it only removes personalization, it does not remove context (language, location, time of year).
9. There are ways to turn off all personalized results. Google’s position is that user’s own their data. However, context will still be taken into account.

Interview Transcript

Eric Enge: Sometimes people confuse the notion of context with personalization, right?

If I respond to your query in your language that is really about context, not personalization.

Jack Menzel: That’s right. Sometimes results that are really a result of context get misinterpreted by people as personalization. If I respond to your query in your language that is really about context, not personalization. Personalization is more about recognizing that I like Dominion the card game and you really like Dominion the power company, and someone else really likes a videogame called Dominion. Imagine you turned off personalization, and suddenly Google was responding to all of your queries in the wrong language, you would be like “oh come on”.

Eric Enge: Another example would be that you are in the US and Halloween is in the near future.

Jack Menzel: Correct, right before thanksgiving there are a lot of searches about turkeys, and it often means people want turkey recipes.

Eric Enge: What are some of the other kinds of things that fit into the definition of context?

Jack Menzel: Let’s use a conversation based example. If we are both in Mountain View and I am talking to you about catching a bus, I don’t have to remind you that I am talking about bus in Mountain View, as opposed to one in Austin, Texas.

We take into account geography, language, and seasonality to a certain extent.

We take into account geography, language, and seasonality to a certain extent. The context of the previous queries is kind of on the borderline of what is personal and what isn’t.

Eric Enge: For example, if a person’s previous query was “Rome”, and then they search on “hotel”, there is going to be a tendency to show hotels in Rome.

Search results 3 to 5 for “hotels” when the prior search was for “rome”

Continue Reading…