Google has always advocated the importance of relevance and quality in its search results, trying to ensure its algorithm presents the most relevant posts of the highest quality information/content at the top to its searchers.
 
If we are being honest though SEO means that this is not always going to be the case, as the SEO expert or company who can hire a search marketing agency, may not have the best or most relevant content, but sit pretty at the top of Google.

So what do Google do to counter act this and to further their relevancy for individuals using search? They personalise it!

Google has been attempting to perfect personalised search for some time, often scrapping entire initiatives and returning to the storyboard in an attempt to crack it.


Personalised search will promote specific links within Google’s natural search if a user has clicked on them a number of times. This process will even occur if the user isn’t logged in and will store this data for 180 days unless it is switched off.

What does this mean to SEO? Potentially a refined and successful personalised search functionality could mean the death of SEO as we know it, as nobody can be sure exactly what the end user will see when they search.

So regardless of the activity conducted with regard to SEO your site may still fall behind a searchers favourite website or a site they have clicked on before. 

Why would Google do this? Well obviously there is the battle with SEO and relevancy/quality as mentioned above, but is it as simple as that?

I am sure that Google will say it is another push for relevancy but is it simply a coincidence that this will increase the importance of PPC for guaranteed top page placement? Probably not, seeing as this is one of the things that has made the search engine the massive power it is today.

If this is the death of SEO, what does it mean to your search marketing strategy and website? I would suggest that at the moment it isn’t that drastic.

The functionality is not perfect and in many ways reduces the usability of the search engine; completely the opposite of what Google wants. This will probably mean another rethink on the process. Also the functionality can be manually switched off meaning we are back to square one.

Another consideration is that even though some of the results will be personalised there will be a large number that are not and remain under the mercy of the algorithm as we know it. This will mean that SEO is still just as important to your website as ever.

So is SEO dead? Definitely not, if anything it has just caught a rather nasty cold and after a bit of rest it will be back on its feet in no time.

Expect Google, however, to continue to revolutionise the way that its search results are returned and personalised search will definitely be one of their focal points.