Is Google Getting Too Personal? - An Illustration
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Okay, so the difference is supposed to be subtle or not even noticeable at first, right? Well, I wondered how big of a difference it would make to someone like me, who does a lot of searching for various items but doesn’t waste much attention on logging in. Here’s what a Google search on the term SEO looks like when I’m not logged in:
Here’s what the same search looks like when I’m signed in:
The difference is really subtle. What you don’t see in the images is that Google does indicate in the blue bar at the top whether or not your results are personalized. Anyway, what’s the difference here? The personalized result gets an extra ad (which I can do without, frankly). Also, Wikipedia is the number two result rather than the number one result, and the page on which Google explains what an SEO is has been bumped down one spot.
In my case, this is probably the beginning of a trend that makes a lot of sense. Depending on the needs of our sites, I write anywhere from one to three articles covering SEO every week; I already know a lot of the basic information about SEO, and so do my readers. It made me blink when I saw the difference, but I was not tremendously taken aback. It fits in with the example Sep Kamvar posted on the official Google blog about the change -- that he, as a Miami Dolphins fan, would see info about his favorite football team when he searches for dolphins, but a marine biologist would get information about the salt-water mammal. I have to wonder what a marine biologist who is also a Miami Dolphins fan – and believe me, there are plenty of those here in Florida – would see.
Next: The SEO Implications >>
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