Our last couple of articles has been about how Google is offering its searchers more power to revise and personalize their search results.
What is going on here and what does this mean in terms of online strategy?
Google has made it easier for the consumers to slice and dice their search results. Clearly this feature makes it easier for the average searcher to create more powerful searches. For the business owner, this is one more step in a Google trend: the overall power of a traditional top 10 organic listing continues to be diluted.
- First the top 10 organic was diluted by PPC, which put 3 results above it.
- Second, it was diluted by Google Maps 10-box which puts 10 results above it in “local” searches.
- Then it was diluted by Google’s “Universal Search” which began inserting videos, news and images into the top ten. Although, this seems to be happening less often now.
- Concurrently it began being diluted by “personalized” search which gives users the power to change their search and gives customized results to some users.
- Meanwhile, Google’s International search engines and Mobile search are also on the rise
- Now, it is being diluted by letting users more easily change their results based upon time-frame, alternative recommended keyword phrases, and specialty (reviews, videos, forum) searches.
Who is going to benefit by this? The search consumer.
Another beneficiary is the website marketer who has revised their search strategy to focuses on local search, videos, reviews, press releases and all the other activities that create a broad footprint of content for Google to use to dilute their organic listings. Give Google what it wants!
Back in 1999 we segmented SEO priorities into search engines:
- Yahoo
- AltaVista
- Excite
- MSN
- Lycos
- Ask Jeeves
- Goto
Now, in 2009 we divide up search into content segments:
- Traditional Organic
- PPC
- Local
- Video
- News
- Blog
- International
- Mobile
The successful modern online marketer has strategic initiatives that touch all of these segments!
Plain old top-10 organic search is still powerful, don’t get me wrong. BUT… the world is changing. The first thing the modern web marketer must do is stop measuring success solely based upon a top ranking for some specific keyword phrases. Instead, search marketers should focus on measuring overall search traffic. By measuring your results more broadly, you will be able to focus your attentions on Google and its many sources of traffic: Organic, PPC, Local, International, Mobile, Video, Images, Blog, News, etc.
How will we divide up search into 2019?
Sooner or later, you’ll have people forming patterns in how they choose to personalize their data. And as the number of attributes to customize change, the more likely it is that strong patterns will emerge in customer segments.
Will SEO + personalized segmentation be the next thing?
Does Google show different results on a Mobile Search from a PC search? Or am I missing the point? (Sorry if I am, but new to all this and trying to learn what I can.) How does Google differentiate the results?
The organic search results are still obviously important, but google really is trying to focus more on user oriented results. They have been going this way for a long time and now the geo targeting is making it even more interesting from an SEO perspective.
“Will SEO + personalized segmentation be the next thing?” – I believe it will. I mean, what else is left? Thoughts?
I totally agree with you! Trent
I think i’ll stay away from PPC, but will definetely do more video.
Google seems to love video more and more,
Still i don’t know how well those adsense ads do on youtube.
Well, we’ll see.