With this advanced search history feature enabled, Google will begin to learn your search preferences and adapt the results that appear on your SERPs to your own personal trends. Naturally this information has to be recorded in order to affect your personal results and this new algorithm makes it possible to browse your own, unique search history direct from the account settings page. However, whilst this may prove a popular and interesting addition for the average home user, those in the search engine optimisation world are realising that Google's default personalised search could hold significant issues for optimising websites in the future.
Once you are signed into your Google Account, the most noticeable indication that your search results are now personalised appears at the top of the Google results page:
Rather than this new search algorithm completely distorting the normal search results for that particular term, Google indicates that the results are essentially the same but with some personalised results thrown in. Indeed the results for the above search, 'search engine optimisation', reveal bigmouthmedia at the top.
The non-personalised results reveal a slightly different outcome in the highly competitive results for Google.com.
A quick scan of these search results indicates that this feature pulls out a few personalised results and places them at the top of the search, whilst the remainder of the results appear untouched. As a user's search history increases over time, we would expect the algorithm to adapt and include further results that seem appropriate to the user trend search history. For the moment, however, the effect appears to be subtle.
For existing account holders, this new feature is not enabled by default. But old Google Account holders are still able to activate personalisation if they choose to do so. Navigating to the 'My Account' page reveals the options available.
Clicking through to the Search History page allows the user to deactivate, adapt or refine the history feature to their preference.
For any existing history data, the user also has the ability to gather trend data based on the search history so far and reveal other detailed information under the 'Interesting Items' section where top queries and pages related to searches can be analysed.
Search History itself is not a new feature, having been introduced in April 2005. It keeps a track of every search made (when signed in) and any page you have clicked on from Google's search result listings. This tracking continues to cover any Google News searches, image searches and Froogle shopping results. The personalised search idea itself is not a new one in the search engine market either, with Google's main rivals Yahoo!, MSN and Amazon all announcing or rolling out this predictive technology.
A Zoomerang personalised search study commissioned by iMedia Connection reveals that more than 80 per cent of internet users want personalised content.
It's possible to speculate that Google and the other leading search engines will use personalised search data to refine generic search engine performance. For example, any strong geographic search trend could be analysed and adapted into the search engine to further improve search results for that region. Search result clustering is relatively new in the technology world and a few notable search engines, such as Clusty, utilise this specifically to generate relevant search results.
User trends and possible feedback loops created by using this new technology will provide interesting sources of speculation in the short term, and build a comprehensive set of user stats and demographic classifications to enable smart use of the 'Historical Search' user types.
In a field which has now seen Google put its weight behind its own offering, you would also expect to also see Yahoo! and Microsoft take more vigorous steps towards dynamically filtering their own results - assuming, that is, that the Google push for personalised search is successfully embraced.
So get your stats out everyone - it's time to get demographic!
