Joseph Volcy
May 27, 2010 12:42 PM
4 Comments

'Personalised Search' and the New Search Metric

May 27, 2010 12:42 PM

A couple of weeks ago I found the ranking positions of a website I'm working on drastically fluctuating from position 1 to 4. I was intrigued with how ranking positions were fluctuating that much on Google in a very short space of time.

I quickly found out that Google recently released a very exciting new feature in Webmaster Tool that enables us to see the number of impressions and clicks for our most popular keywords, together with the rankings of keywords for a defined period. This was interesting, since it was now possible to analyse how the number of impressions and clicks differed based on the different positions of a website in Google search results. In fact, this new Webmaster Tool feature is quite close to the Click-Through-Rate data provided in Google Adwords.

Ranking Report in Google Webmaster Tool

I was delighted to find such detailed and useful information. However, I quickly realised that what Google might be indirectly telling us is quite exceptional and could drastically change the way the 'search industry' reports on results.

The most interesting thing I discovered is the fact that Google is now showing data on rankings across a range of results: detailed information from position 1 to position 5, and combined data for position 6-10 and then combined data for the 2nd page and 3rd page on the Search Engine Results (SERPs). With the recent advent of Google Personalised Search, rankings are no longer the same for every visitor and never before had there been a good way of tracking the impact of this.

Personalised search is, in reality, customised search results for users based on their previous search activity. This being possible by an anonymous cookie in their browsers and which Google says is completely separated from Google Accounts. But with this new Google webmaster tool feature, we are now capable of analysing the rankings of websites on both personalised results and general organic results.

What Google is trying to make us understand here is that a website will no longer have a particular ranking for a specific keyword, but will have a range of rankings determined by various personalisation factors.

So, I believe search experts will now have to analyse, optimise and report on website rankings differently. Whilst in the past an agency or in-house Search Specialist might have reported on exact website rankings based on targeted keywords, reports would make more sense if they now provide the complete range of ranking positions that a website has for a keyword together with its related traffic. Below is an example on how a section of a search report might look:

Organic Search Ranking Report

Furthermore, goals in SEO campaigns will most probably change from delivering a particular ranking to giving a site a higher probability of ranking in a certain range of positions. For example: increasing the probability that a site will rank in the top 3 positions from 15% to 60%, rather than looking and reporting on a website's ranking at a given day and time. A report showing that a website was in the top 3 rankings 60% of the time for a particular month will be a lot more valuable than just saying that a website ranked 1st at the last ranking report.

It will also not be a surprise to find results being bounced around every week, every day or even every hour (depending on the specific time of day, for instance).
It is most probable that the new rule would be 'ranking' being just a probability rather than an exact number.

It seems that more than ever Google is telling us to stop worrying about exact rankings and to focus on targeted traffic generated by a range of ranking positions. Because in the end it's all about targeted traffic and conversions.

'Personalised Search' and the New Search Metric

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