Google recently announced another big change in how they will be presenting search results. They are extending their Personalized Search to everyone, this means all Google users, whether logged in or not, will start seeing personalized results.

Google explains Personalized Search:

For example, since I always search for [recipes] and often click on results from epicurious.com, Google might rank epicurious.com higher on the results page the next time I look for recipes. Other times, when I’m looking for news about Cornell University’s sports teams, I search for [big red]. Because I frequently click on www.cornellbigred.com, Google might show me this result first, instead of the Big Red soda company or others.

The customized search results are based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser. And you can tell when customized results are being shown because a “View customizations” link will appear on the top right of the search results page. Clicking the link will let you see how Google customized your search results and also let you turn off the customization. But I’m guessing the average “Joe web surfer” won’t know about the personalizations or how to turn them off.

Previously Personalized Search was only provided to users who were logged into a Google account and had Web history enabled (Google has it turned on by default when creating a new account).  This caused some confusion with many of our Dallas SEO clients as they began to see their own site rankings fall in the search results pages for their major keywords. Clients would call in a panic about their rankings and I would explain about Personalized Search and most of the time the client was logged into Google and once they logged out their own site was back to ranking where they had previously seen it. Turns out these clients had been studying their competition’s websites for their main keywords and were not clicking on their own sites, so Google assumed they actually preferred the competitor’s sites over their own.

So what does this mean for SEO?

As WebProNews puts it:

Naturally, when Google announces any significant changes to the way users get their search results, the search engine optimization community must take notice, and must consider what said changes mean for them. If people start getting more results that are specifically tailored to their own tastes, it could be harder for businsses to reach those people through traditional SEO tactics. That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is this: Google always makes changes, but there are always ways to adapt.

Rest assured the internet marketing team at MasterLink is keeping abreast of the changes at Google. I don’t personally foresee this affecting the way we preform SEO, but may increase the need for social media marketing on sites like Facebook and Twitter to reach your targeted audience.

The biggest change I see happening is that focusing on keyword rankings to gauge a SEO campaign’s success will become completely irrelevant as everyone will be seeing different results for the exact same queries based on past browsing history (if they have not figured out how to turn it off). So, as always, but even more so now, we will focus on actual results that show a positive ROI to determine success. Is your site gaining traffic for your top keywords as well as long tail keyword phrases? Are you getting more conversions, sales, leads from your website? These are the types of statistics a results-orientated, ROI-focused SEO campaign should be tracking. SEO for rankings is dead!

The Apple “It’s Only Rock n Roll” Event happened with Steve Jobs appearing in public the first time this year. With the fan-fare came the expected release of the new iPod, iPhone, and iTunes releases. In the interest of full disclosure, I am an owner of the new 3Gs. With Obama being a Blackberry customer, the smart phone revolution is in full swing!

I can never avoid the temptation to go see how each of the searches engines fare in comparison to new news. The first thing I look at is the displayed text on the search results page to see if there are any relevant terms. After which I click on some of the links to see if I gain anything of use. Using the keyword “iTunes” in this case would theoretically contain relevant terms such as “iTunes 9” or possibly “iPhone OS 3.1”. The next thing I look for are the dates to see how fresh the content is. This may require me clicking into the link to check, as well. The third thing I look at is the layout combined with the variety of relevant items. The last one seems to be superfluous, but in all honesty, who really wants to see a single, vertical column of nothing but Wikipedia links?

I always start with Ask.com. Jeeves may have left (but he’s back in the UK!), but I think many of us remember AskJeeves fondly. Besides, as far as traffic goes, Ask is still competitive with Bing.com. Either way, it quickly becomes clear why Ask is no longer considered a “major” search engine.

The term “iTunes” returned a somewhat barren, but clean results page. Each of the links had a “binoculars” icon that allowed a mouse-over preview of the link. Without the “binoculars” I would have been discouraged as the only relevant terms discussed were iTunes 8, which sounds like slow indexing to me.

There was an image mid-way down the page with a couple relevant-looking links. I clicked on both of them and realized they were forum pages for their Q&A (beta) tab. A few of the links on the main search result page did wind up discussing iTunes 9, the iPhone. They were scant on details and they did not include the latest relevant terms. Most of the links were a month or two old.

What I did like is being able to find the listings of numerous songs provided in iTunes along with easily accessible iTunes download pages. The “binoculars” icon is a nice feature. The Q&A Tab could grow into something more like Yahoo Answers over time.

Unfortunately, I find Ask slipping faster and further behind in the search race. Next week I’ll see how Bing stacks up in comparison.

Let’s say your suffer a blowout near Texarkana and need to find a tire store. A search engine could get you the urgent information you need…or it might just lead you to a website run by Texas senator and 2010 gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Search engine optimization went mainstream in Texas political discussion three weeks ago, when the Austin American-Statesman reported that the www.standbykay.com site run by the Hutchison campaign had more than 2,200 such computer-generated “Hidden Phrases” written into its source code, with the goal of boosting search results rankings for each of the dubious search terms.

This meant that both the expected (”Texas Republicans”), and the bizarre, but harmless (”Cooper Tire Texarkana,” “What is a keg?” and “Why do we have knees?”) would help you stand with the senator. Political comedian Bill Maher made his way in via four different spellings of his name. Ron Paul earned more than 120 mentions, including an eyebrow-raising “Bad Things about Ron Paul.” Incumbent governor Rick Perry was represented 148 times including, most scandalously, the search term “Rick Perry Gay.”

The Hutchison campaign denied knowledge and eventually severed ties with the consulting firm credited with what we in the interactive marketing community call “black hat” SEO strategy-gone-wrong. But the damage was done.

The Hutchison campaign took an egg to the face. Modern politics entered another new bizarro realm of controversy. And we learned a hefty reminder about the risk of black hat SEO techniques.

Why Black Hat?

The idea behind black hat is simple: boost search engine rankings by means that are frowned upon by the larger SEO community. In practice, this usually means techniques like:

• Invisible text: Hiding irrelevant keywords by, say, writing them in white text on white backgrounds.
• Stuffing keywords: Skipping any effort to seamlessly fit the keywords into the text, and instead inserting long lists of keywords without any relevant content.
• Doorway pages: Building fake pages filled with keywords that the site visitor never sees (but which search spiders do).

The Hutchison site stuffed keywords under an invisible CSS <div> tag “display: none.”

At Masterlink, of course, we do not condone the use of black hat SEO techniques for three main reasons:

1. It’s ethically questionable, and creates a user-unfriendly search environment.

Search engines are powering the information age, and we all depend on their accuracy. Imagine a search world where black hat techniques were allowed to spread unfettered. You’d search for information about local schools, and get listings for sites selling knockoff Gucci bags from Bangalore. You’d search for a tire store in an emergency, and learn about, well, a gubernatorial challenger.

This just isn’t the game we want to play. And it too often comes back to bite the website that tries it.

2. At best, it’s a risky strategy.

Even beyond the press and blogosphere backlash, Google got wind of the senator’s SEO shenanigans. The omnipotent engine eventually dropped the site from its search results.

Black hat often achieves its desired results, but only temporarily. It is in the search engines’ best interests to keep optimization a fair game, and sites unfairly gaining an advantage almost always eventually get caught.

3. Above all, it’s unnecessary.

MasterLink’s internet marketing methods have provided proven, safe, efficient results, without using such misleading techniques.

Google Chrome, while still in beta, has been slowly finding its way onto increasingly larger percentages of existing computers. Google Wave has been released to developers and may practically re-invent the way we work on the internet. Twitter Search has forced Google’s hand into pushing for more real-time searches and the unveiling of Google Caffeine. Google OS has been announced for release in a couple years.

Bing has single-handedly saved Microsoft search from plunging into the depths of internet obscurity, while reversing the decreasing revenue trends that normally spell death for a search network. Microsoft has also pulled off a coup almost two years in the making by assuming the role of Yahoo’s search engine. Microsoft has issued a widespread beta release of their version of the Content Network.
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This winner-take-all chess match should also determine if the desktop machine will remain the preeminent computational workhouse with cloud-computing a serious option.

We get it guys. You’re two technology behemoths that are in a no-holds-barred, fight to the death to see who will define Web 3.0. Well that’s just it isn’t it? It won’t be Microsoft or Google that get to decide the internet’s advancement. The users get a seat at the big-kid table, too. If the user didn’t get the say, then Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter would have never entered our common geek vernacular.

Not a day goes by without the two juggernauts beating their chest about something or other. Meanwhile, they’re still behind in the real-time search field, and Facebook just got FriendFeed for their part. The last-time I checked Ask was still pretty competitive with Bing in search volume. Apple is quickly eating up the mobile devices department with its own iPhone. Firefox is making huge leaps and bounds in the browser wars.

It’s fun to watch while big companies go head-to-head. The only winner can be the consumer. Still, let’s not take our eyes off the ball, and remember what counts; the user.