Personalized Search

Personalized search – an algorithm by which a search is made on the Internet with an individual approach for each user. When searching, many factors are taken into account. Among them are the previous visit to the sites, your geolocation and others. In total, there are about 200 such factors.

What is Personalized Search?

In other words, personalized search is an attempt by algorithmic searches to predict what you need to find next. The calculation is done using previous data mainly from your browsing history.
Search engines also search for users with similar interests and build a search based on their actions.

Website Positions for Personalized Search Results

Search engines like Yandex and Google follow the same goal: to provide suitable information for the entered phrase, to organize the search so that it is comfortable, relevant and of high quality. SE algorithms analyze and take into account the tastes and interests of users that have been collected.

After clicking on the “Search” button, the system will process:

• Search subject;
• Where did you access to the global network and other personal information;
• How long you spent on the site;
• What web resources were visited.

Based on this, the next time for this request, the most relevant pages will be provided.
It is easy to guess that the longer a person uses search engines, the more accurate the results are. Thus, your browser seems to become your friend, who over time gets to know you better and better, and at some point can understand you perfectly.

Pros of Personalized Search

Thanks to personalized search, people can get interesting and useful information for them personally. Thus, different people will receive different sets of web resources for the same search query. The search results will differ not only for visitors but also for devices: if a laptop, smartphone, tablet and computer are used, this implies 4 practically different answers to similar queries.
It happens due to the difference in the browsing history, and therefore in the collected information about the user. Also, websites that are not optimized for smartphones practically do not appear in the search results on mobile devices. Therefore, you need to work on optimizing the site for mobile devices and track the rating separately for smartphones and PCs.

When explaining how the personalized search results work, Yandex employees give the following example: if you enter the query “Northern Lights”, the answer will be different for different users. A person who is constantly on business trips and moves around the world will be given information about a natural phenomenon. For a girl who loves shopping – a store with a similar name. For a movie fan – links to pages of online cinemas offering to watch a movie.

You need to understand that personalization is constantly changing depending on your actions on the Internet. And what was preferable to you today may no longer be so tomorrow.

Since January 2013, the positions of sites shown on mobile devices do not match those shown on PCs. At the same time, many webmasters believe that there are no serious consequences for the visibility of a web resource.

Cons of Personalized Search

It’s impossible to tell if personalization is good or bad, but it has the greatest impact on information requests. The web resources of organizations for which sales are the most important should take care of high positions in commercial requests.

Search engine promotion is aimed at attracting new users who are not yet loyal to competing companies. Often these are the people who want to make a purchase or order service for the first time. Since they are doing this for the first time, there is no past history of their queries.

For a user typing such a phrase or word, the action of the personalized SERP will be almost imperceptible. It follows that the bulk of the results for these queries will be the same for different users and their devices.

The main task of promotion in search engines still remains not only to achieve high positions by the site in a huge number of commercial queries, but also to turn a visitor into a buyer. That is, it is necessary to improve the usability and uniqueness of the content component of the web resource.

At the same time, do not forget about popularizing your product with the help of crowd marketing, which today is one of the most effective tools in promoting various products and sites. After all, no matter how useful and unique your website is, it will not make any sense if no one knows about its existence, and it will not be taken into account in the compilation of personalized search results.