At PubCon, Bruce Clay, Inc. President Bruce Clay presented at a session entitled "Top-Shelf Organic SEO" in which he discussed the approaching future of SEO as search engines evolve into more modern ranking methods through more personalized search results. Bruce was good enough to take the time to speak with our own Michael McDonald in a one-on-one interview about personal search, which can be viewed in the video >>>.
In the interview, Bruce elaborated on the concepts mentioned above.
Behavior Based Search
Bruce says that everybody who does a search will end up with
different search results based on their prior search history.
Personalization is going to be "web-wide" using third party
cookies and things.
He provided a specific example of a search for "java". Some are
looking for programming, some are looking for the beverage, and
some are looking for travel information. Theoretically, personal
search will know that and provide results accordingly.
"We can't search for any term and look at rankings because I can
get different results than you for exactly the same query. So
that's going to change a lot," he says. It doesn't matter if
you're logged into Google or not. Bruce believes that Google
personalized results will be coming out within the first quarter
of next year.
Intent-based Search
Google has been looking up your IP and revising results based on
IP. They know where you're located and can make assumptions
about the intent of your search. As you get more into
intent-based search, it's going to change the way pages rank,
Bruce explains. "The page that ranks for a shopping query is an
entirely different architecture than the page that ranks for a
research query."
Where Does this Leave the SEO Crowd?
"Ranking is dead," says Bruce, recalling his words from his
presentation. Going forward, he says you're going to have to
look at analytics, measure traffic, bounce rates, action, etc.
SEOs will have to ask themselves questions like:
- Did I get the conversion I was after?
- Did I really deliver on the promise of SEO?
Bruce thinks that in the first six months of 2009, we're
going to see a lot more implementation of behavior and
intent-based search leading to a mindset of "ranking is dead,
and traffic is all that matters."
Universal Search
Bruce
says this will be the most significant factor of 2009. Google
looks at soundtracks and convert them to text. They can jump
into the middle of videos, scan sites to determine if you have
video/images or not. There are a lot of variables in universal
search, and some of these variables tell how engaging your site
is.
If you don't have video and your competition does, Bruce thinks
we're going to see a big shift in rankings. He thinks if the top
ten sites don't have video, they may lose their ranking over
night.
Bruce notes that Google has been testing some of these
variables, and will really start testing them a lot more in the
first quarter, once the holidays are out of the way. He mentions
the criticism Google took over the
Florida
Update, which took place in the month of November, and
believes the company wants to avoid that again. He thinks we're
going to see a lot of "Google Dances" early in the year though.
The Impact on Spam
According to Bruce, this is all going to really help Google
fight spammers. He says it will affect the way scrapers and
spammers work, because if they are just scraping text, they
wouldn't be able to rank.
He also says that all of the variables that come into play may
diminish the value of linking, which will certainly not help the
spammers' cause either. He says it will be a big win for Google,
and big win for the searchers.
There's no question that if everything Bruce talked about comes
true, the SEO world will be turned on its ear. Bruce says, "If
you're not ready for it as an SEO, you're gonna lose."
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