Search engines primarily work for those who are looking for information - for ordinary users. And to ensure that such a user is satisfied with the search results, search engines use hundreds of ranking algorithms. They also take into account the personal interests of each user - what they watched, which sites they were already on, which they left quickly, and which they stopped at. The information is processed and taken into account when generating results for display to each user. This is called search personalization.
But for webmasters and website owners, personalization can be a hindrance. Remember the sensational story with SEO amulets? When a respectable lady was deceived by selling her amulets to promote the site and incense, which she burned and at the same time searched for her site using the necessary queries. As a result, the site reached the first positions, but, unfortunately, only in its personalized search results.
To avoid being fooled by personalization, turn it off. Then you won’t jump for joy that your site is in 5th place for the query “buy blah blah”, while for your clients it is not even in the top 20.
Disabling personalization in Yandex
To disable personalization in Yandex, go to the search settings and uncheck the following boxes:
Disabling personalization from Google
Google does personalization in two ways, and you can turn it off differently depending on whether you're signed in to your account. Google account at the time of search or not:
If you're signed in to your Google account:
If you are logged into your Google account, the history of your actions is recorded there. Disable recording. To do this, in the upper right corner of the search results page, click on the gear icon and select “Search Settings”:
Here in the “Personal Results” section, please do not show these “personal” ones and do not forget to “Save” settings:
It's also worth clearing your search history. To do this, again go to the settings through the gear icon and select the “History” item. A window will open recording your actions. In the upper left corner, click on the menu icon and then “Select deletion option”:
Then confirm all actions and your conscience is clear.
If you're not signed in to your Google account:
If you do not yet have a Google account or you are logging in from a device/browser that you are not yet logged in to, Google takes personalization data from Cookies, saved by your browser.
Here brief instructions on clearing Cookies for major browsers:
Is it possible to do without disabling personalization?
If you're struggling with personalization just to see your site's position for certain queries, then... you're wasting your time in vain. A cross-section of a site’s position in search can be done in specialized services. This will significantly save your time and help you understand whether the work carried out to promote the site is effective.
We made a selection of services that check positions
If you have other reasons for turning off personalization... then you can do so using the instructions above.
Personalizing Google search results
For a long time now, Google has been generating search results in accordance with the preferences of a particular user, by tracking his behavior after logging into Gmail account.
After it was introduced, there was talk that now clicks on it would greatly affect the results of sites. Those. On which pages this button was clicked more, those pages will rank better. It was quite difficult to verify this.
But over time it became clear that Google began to provide truly personalized search.
Previously, I didn’t pay much attention to this until I noticed something interesting yesterday:
Whether this is good or bad, time will tell.
Video from Google itself about personalized search:
Also look at this Google thread:
- - video.
- — translation of the official manual.
P.S. Immediately after this post went up, the position for the query “Competent selection of keywords” dropped from 11th to 20th. What an irony of fate...
An educated person is one who knows where to find what he does not know.
Georg Simmel
The founders of each search engine set themselves the task of not just creating a search engine, but a service that can predict all the thoughts and desires of the user and find a complete and relevant answer to his question the first time. The path to its implementation is long and thorny! And as we see, today not a single search engine in the world has been able to create such a perfect algorithm to answer all user requests with 100% accuracy the first time. You can spend many years searching for a solution, however, Lately In the search world, the trend of personalization of search results has become firmly established. Indeed, why guess what the user wants if the desires of the majority differ. You can’t please everyone, but you can please individual people very much, Google decided and was the first search engine to conduct “ personalized revolution" What it was, and what consequences await users and optimizers, we will look at in this article.
First attempts
Google made its first attempt to personalize search results back in 2007. Then the search engine invited users to mark how relevant the resource is in the results using the appropriate emoticons in the toolbar.
Blocking pages in SERP
The idea of arranging stars and ratings never caught on. In 2011, Google took a fundamentally new path: why ask users to vote for their favorite sites when you can simply remove irrelevant resources from the search results!
As a result, the search engine launched the function blocking pages in SERP. The function was first implemented as for Google browser Chrome. Using this extension, the user could remove sites from the search results that were not relevant to the specified request. In the future, these sites will be included in individual SERP given user no longer showed up. The user received a unique search result, and Google received free assessors, because all data about blocked sites was sent directly to the search engine specialists.
Some time later, this extension was transformed into a search engine, and all logged-in Google users could block sites and change the results to their taste. In the fall, the innovation will be available to users in most countries.
According to Google, data on blocked sites in currently collected and will be taken into account when ranking in the future. How exactly is not yet said. But it has already been said more than once that using this information, Google will be able to clear spam from search results and improve its quality.
+1 button
The idea of users voting for their favorite sites never left Google. At the end of March 2011, a search engine appeared in the search results, which allowed users to mark the sites they liked directly in the search results. At first, this feature was only available to logged in users. However, already in the summer of 2011, all Google users could see how many “pluses” a particular site received in the search results. A little earlier, the +1 button became available for installation on third-party sites.
With the introduction of the +1 button, each user's output receives an element of individuality. After all, in addition to the number of +1 marks, the user sees who from his contact list and Google+ friends rated this site. And following their recommendations, choose the most suitable result in the search results.
Thus, Google once again replenished its army of assessors who helped it improve the quality of search. However, the search engine did not tell in detail how exactly the information about the “pluses” of users will be used. The only thing he mentioned is that all data will be tested and only then added to the ranking formula in order to improve the quality of the SERP.
However, Google still allowed webmasters to learn about the effect of the +1 button on the site. In the summer, Google Webmaster Tools appeared, which reflects the impact of a button on the amount of traffic to the site and on the CTR of the site. For comparison, data on the CTR of a page with and without +1 comments is displayed. Additionally, the report shows geographic and demographic information about Google users who pressed the +1 button.
In addition, Google reported that the presence of a +1 button on a site will encourage more search robots to visit the site.
Search Plus Your World
The tendency to provide different results to different users has emerged in search engines a long time ago. However, in January 2012, Google went even further and offered users completely personalized search results, diluting the results with information from the Google+ social network. New feature was called “Search Plus Your World” and consisted in the fact that from now on the user was offered 2 types of SERP:
Despite the criticism, Google's version of personalized results is still a very significant step in the development of search. Of course, it is still far from perfect, and its usefulness and necessity are questioned by many. But I don’t think that many users perceive the innovation negatively - after all, they can always switch to regular version SERP.
If you personalize it, then that’s it, Google decided and began to remember the queries that users asked, so that they could later be displayed in suggestions. These queries are highlighted in the search suggestions block purple, and a Delete button appears next to them. Personally, it started working for me in mid-February, but, according to one of our readers, this situation has been observed for a couple of months now. No Google yet official statements I didn’t do this on this score.
What the experts say
I wonder how personalized Google search? We turned to leading SEO specialists with this question.
Leonid Grokhovsky, Director of Promotion Technology and Automation, Optimizm.ru:
Search personalization is an important step towards the development of search engines. As the social services and analytical systems, the amount of information from which search engines can draw conclusions about user needs will certainly only grow.
Here we cannot fail to mention the development trend behavioral factors, which are also based on user research. Many years ago, when search engines were just beginning to exist, it was not possible to take these factors into account, so search algorithms were forced to be developed on the basis of indirect signs that determine whether the page content matches the user’s needs. Today we are witnessing the beginning of a new era of search, which is based on real user data.
What does the future hold for us? The trend will continue to develop, but not as rapidly as many would like. The fact is that collecting, calculating and processing this data requires enormous power. Should we be afraid of this? It’s unlikely, because this trend takes us from spam to marketing.
Alexey Podymov, analyst, Ingate:
The direction is interesting and, undoubtedly, is designed to improve the quality of search in the eyes of the user. Yandex, as you know, is also experimenting with both search results and personalized search suggestions (except that it doesn’t have its own Yandex+ yet).
As a search engine user, I am, in principle, impressed by the ability to manageSERP’om - block sites, vote, recommend to friends. The main thing for a search engine is to maintain a balance between personalized and adequate results; for the user - not to be locked in his own little world - entering a request using a personal hint, visiting “his” previously marked sites, reading the posts of his friends... in such a situation, the Internet risks limiting each user to two to three hundred pages.
I think the direction of personalized search will be developed by leading search engines, including through increased interaction with social networks, because personalization is inextricably linked with social activity users. The day is probably not far off whenGooglehe will enter the request for you, he will choose required product, he will discuss it with your friends, make the order himself... you can only hope that he will pay for it himself :)
Elena Kamskaya, supervisor Seolib.ru:
I think, first of all, personalization will be made available for regional searches, including Google.ru. The next step will likely be mandatory personalization of search results - personalized posts will be mixed into the main results, regardless of whether the user wants it or not.
I also don’t rule out the possibility that Google will eventually find a common language with Facebook, and then one of next steps could be using Facebook data to personalize searches.
For me personally, as a user, I do not see the need for such “social” personalization. If I want to find out something from friends or acquaintances, I can do it without the help of a search engine. Therefore, I consider personalization based on user location data, like Yandex, much more successful. Now, for most queries in Yandex, each user receives links to companies that are located in his city. In the future, perhaps, links to companies that are located on the next street or in the next house will be shown - this will be a good personalized search.
The main task of systems that organize searches is to satisfy the user’s information needs as quickly as possible. Since the information need cannot be accurately determined from one request, it is necessary to study the user, store and analyze the history of his behavior. On the other hand, in some aspects, people trust more those results (sites or companies in the case of commercial queries) that are recommended to them by friends or with which they have had positive experiences interacting. Many global search experts agree that recommendation search is the best option.
In this regard, search giants, starting with Google, when developing their technologies, will move towards studying the preferences of users, as well as the preferences of those people whom these users trust, in most cases these are their friends. This is the main idea behind personalizing search results.
Accordingly, in personalized search we can expect closer interaction between search engines and social networks, where all social connections are stored. At the same time, “+1” and “like” will not have a strong influence on the overall search, since this will be taken into account as recommendations from strangers whom we do not necessarily trust. It is difficult to say how Google's personalized search will develop; it will collect data about us and, based on it, give us its answers to our questions. As for the interface, it shouldn’t change much; it already has everything necessary information for decision making (photos of authors, links to friends’ profiles, etc.).
Search technologies do not stand still. As we can see, Google has long chosen the direction for the development of its own search and diligently follows it. The search engine is confident that personalized results are the most accurate and relevant. And if with Google time decides that search results should be exclusively personalized, most optimizers will only sigh doomedly: after all, if half of the SERP is occupied by personalized posts, the competition for the remaining positions will seriously increase. But imagine how the CTR of the sites remaining in the TOP 10 could increase.
But it is too early to draw final conclusions. Personalized search is currently only available for google.com, which means this version It is currently being tested and tested, and in the future we can expect significant changes.
For the last seven years at Google and the last five years at Yandex, search has become increasingly personalized. It adapts to the user’s location, the device from which he accesses the search engine, previous queries and many other factors, the number of which is growing every year. In this article we will look at how to take personalization into account in website promotion and whether this can increase traffic.
What is personalized search?
Personalized search results rely not only on traditional ranking factors, but also on user data: geography, search history, demographics, interests. The main goal of personalization is to provide the user with not just the best among sites at his request, but exactly what he will like.
Now almost all search engines use this approach as search personalization: Google, Yandex, Mail.ru, Bing (and, therefore, Yahoo). Google started first and succeeded most in this. Already in 2011, experiments showed that more than 50% of Google searches were personalized, since then this number has probably approached 100%.
Personalized Google Search
The first attempts to involve social factors in the formation search results were in 2008. Then Google gave the opportunity to vote for sites and remove unnecessary links from the results. Currently, about 200 factors are already taken into account based on data collected over the last six months of activity on Google search pages.
Geography
The main factor that Google analyzes is region. Thanks to this, users from different countries see different search results.
The textbook example that is given in connection with this situation is the search results for the query “football”. Users in the UK will see results related to regular football and the English Premier League, while users in the US will see information about American football.
Depending on the geography of the user, the search results differ: people from Moscow and Magadan will see different sites in the search results. Therefore, geo-dependent positions need to be tracked separately for each city.
Web history
The main goal of personalization is to provide users with the most relevant and useful information. Based on previous requests and browser history, the search engine will analyze interests and, based on this data, customize search results.
Because of this, firstly, it becomes more difficult to track the site’s position in the browser. Secondly, the analysis of search history means that if someone in the past viewed the site of a certain company, then in the future they will see it in a more advantageous position, and not, for example, you. Because of this, it is more difficult to track your positions: you have already visited your site more than once.
Seeing an unbiased search results page in your browser is easy: just turn on Incognito/Private mode - so your history will not influence the results you receive (however, location will still be taken into account).
The second problem is more difficult. It is impossible to influence results based on browser history. But don't forget that personalization can and should work for you. When someone runs a search keyword for the first time, you should do your best to appear in the first results. If you are clicked on for some queries, then for these users you will be promoted for others as well.
Mobile devices
By 2017, distribution on PC and mobile devices It's become so different that it's probably fair to say that Google mobile search is slowly becoming a separate search engine with its own set of ranking factors.
One of the most important ranking factors for mobile devices is the presence of a mobile version or adaptive layout. Sites that are not optimized for smartphones are practically not included in the search results. Therefore, you need to work on optimizing your site for mobile devices and monitor rankings separately for smartphones and PCs.
Social media
For every user who has a Google+ account, the search engine has social data such as gender, age, interests and friends. This information will also be taken into account for personalized results. if you have Google profile+ and you entered your account Google in your browser, search results will include content you viewed in social network or that your friends interacted with.
Personalized results from social media crowd out some organic links, making it harder to rank well. However, while social media posts shift your site's rankings, they also provide ranking opportunities. Google gives priority to sites that have been linked to on Google+ or that have links to Google+. If you create a Google+ account for your business, share quality content, and have people become your (or your company's) friends on the network, this will help boost your site's ranking.
Other Google Products
Google's capabilities are very wide. The search engine collects data about its users from other products - Gmail, Google Play, Google Calendar, Google Maps, Youtube, etc. While this probably doesn't have much impact on SEO yet, it's an interesting trend toward Google becoming much more than a search engine.
Submit your application
Personalized search in Yandex
Personalization in the main Runet search engine began in 2011 with the introduction of the Reykjavik algorithm, which takes into account the language preferences of users. Significant personalization of search results began with the “Kaliningrad” and “Dublin” algorithms, which began to take into account search history.
Although it is still too early to evaluate the results, experts believe that after the implementation of “Queen”, search results will become even more personalized.
Geography
Geographic location has been taken into account in relevant search results for a long time. Yandex pays close attention to this factor: for “geo-dependent” queries, the results may completely change depending on the city.
Web history
For Yandex, history is of particular importance - individual search results directly depend on search activity. Yandex collects information about transitions to user sites, as a result of which it “recognizes” the person’s personal context. This takes into account factors such as transitions, user behavior on the page, etc. If a person has been using the Yandex search engine relatively recently, then the results will become individual as soon as enough information is collected.
Featured Sites
The system also analyzes the preferred interests of users not only based on search history, but also on bookmarks.How accurate are search engines?
We propose to compare how search services cope with personalization. Using the automated search engine quality assessment service AnalyzeThis.ru, developed by our specialists, we found out how well the results of three major search engines met users' expectations: Yandex, Google and Mail.ru.
Each graph shows the dynamics for the last month (the service allows you to view the dynamics both for the year and for the entire period of observation). All data is current as of September 20, 2017.
Regional search
The main personalization parameter used by search engines is the analysis of the user's geography. This does not always play a role, but a significant proportion of requests imply results adjusted for a specific region.
For example, when a hungry user in Ulan-Ud asks the query “pizza delivery,” it is extremely important for him that the search engine understands him correctly: he is unlikely to be interested in the theory of the question (in which cities is pizza the most affordable), and Moscow or St. Petersburg companies are not for him relevant - they do not transport food to Buryatia.
Using a search engine analyzer, we found out which search engine is the most accurate in displaying geo-based queries. The graph below displays data for such Russian cities as Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Krasnodar, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Samara, St. Petersburg, Ufa.
The graph shows that Google for some reason considers it necessary, along with local answers, to show some answers from other cities (which for queries like pizza delivery, indeed, leads to irrelevance, but for some reason it is stubbornly supported by them). At the same time, it is not necessary to assume that Google does not know how to assess the geo-dependence of a request or does not know how to recognize the geography of the user and the site. Moreover, previously the share of localized results was 20 percent - so the current 40% can already be considered progress.
conclusions
Personalized search simplifies the life of users - according to Yandex experiments and research, this allows a person to save 14% of time when searching for information.
For SEO, personalization means making the principles of generating search results more complex.
Mikhail Volovich, head of the Ranking Factors Laboratory, describes the impact of personalized search as follows:
“The usual ranking factors still work, they just add some more “personal” ones, which on average for different users will add up to about plus or minus zero. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the site as before (taking into account changing priorities), and in addition, think about mobile version, social networks, etc. - but they also affect regular ranking. And don’t forget to switch to “anonymous” mode when checking your site’s position in search results - search engines remember that you visited this site often and rank it for you.”
The material was prepared by Anna Akulova.
For quite some time now, search results have depended not only on the user’s request itself, but also on his past activity. This technology has been used by the largest search engines for several years - and quite successfully. That is, if you ask the same formulation from two computers, completely different results can be obtained.
This depends on the user’s characteristics of working with search engines, or other personal factors - location, frequently visited sites, previous queries, and so on. Let's talk in more detail about why search personalization is needed Google systems, as well as the possibilities of personalizing the Chrome browser and even the smart keyboard Google Keyboard.
Basic terms
Personalization is a feature of modern search engines (and not only), through which a person can receive results that are as close as possible to his interests, location and other features. This innovation was introduced almost unnoticed by most users - therefore, quite a few people know that their issuance is not universal.
Moreover, even some marketers, SEO specialists and optimizers manage to forget about this most important aspect, as a result of which they draw erroneous conclusions about their SEO, real search positions for basic queries and other key indicators. Modern Internet technologies offer a number of approaches to personalization - this applies not only to search engines, but also to regular sites, applications, landing pages, etc. We will briefly touch on this aspect, after which we will return to the specifics of Google.
So, most often, current Internet marketing uses geo-personalization by location. For example, the search engine determines your position on the map and then suggests the nearest establishments or companies that match your request. Also, one of the forms of personalization, although with some stretch, can be called the function of integration with social media. For example, the ability to register and import data by clicking on the icon of Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Of course, often in the context of Google, personalization is understood as analyzing the history of previous search queries. The more often you use a search engine, the more information about you goes into the database. Sound ominous? Perhaps, but this helps the search engine refine its results by selecting the most relevant offers.
Google Personalization Features
Above, we discussed in detail what personalization is by definition. So - the Google search engine, of course, also uses this technology, storing and analyzing your personal data to refine the results and improve the user experience in many other aspects. For example, a search engine feed can display results from services and social Google networks, matching your request. For example, if you type in the phrase “Moscow events”, you will see at the very top of the search results a link to your friend’s birthday from the Google+ social network.
For people who are not eager to throw away personal data, there is good news - all this can be turned off. The easiest way is to access the Internet through the “Incognito” mode provided Chrome browser. Or simply log out while surfing. If, when visiting home page Google, in the upper right corner you see a blue “Login” sign, which means you are not logged into your service accounts.
But the most reliable way is, of course, to completely disable personalization. Here's what the search engine's help advises for this:
Now let's look at the other side of the term. How to customize your browser and what advantages the smart keyboard from Google provides.
Personalize Chrome
For users who value careful customization and personalization google chrome, truly wide opportunities open up. The browser allows you to add special applications useful for a wide variety of activities, install themes, extensions, and add several users (so that everyone working at the computer can log in from their own account).
See for yourself how these features are described on the page promoting Chrome:
Working with Google Keyboard
We are talking about a “smart” keyboard, which at one time was positioned as the most “classical”, “clean” - in other words, most suitable for the Android platform.
Its main feature is the so-called continuous input - you can slide your finger from one letter to another, and the smart system itself offers suggestions for words and expressions. This speeds up the process of writing messages - and if it’s still too long, you can always use voice input. No separate personalization of Google Keyboard is required - regarding special settings. The system itself remembers the most common words and phrases entered by the user, and through this constantly refines the results.
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