Lee Odden posted on personalization of search results, and how customized search results spelled the end of conventional ranking reports. He then proceeded to blast an unnamed SEO company for mentioning that they use WebPosition to provide ranking reports for their clients:
At a recent conference I attended, a speaker from a very large search engine optimization company reported that one of the primary reporting tools they use for SEO was WebPositionGold. I was really surprised to hear that and even more surprised to hear him say it to a room full of marketers… We don’t use {WebPosition} in our SEO firm, but used to from 1998 - 2003.
If Google starts personalizing search results, then ranking reports will not be able to tell us exactly where our clients are ranked for every single person. True.
But then they “merely” become as important as Nielson TV ratings: they aren’t an absolute measurement anymore, just a useful statistic. A proxy for measuring what most people will see, and a way for competitors to judge their relative strengths in the market. So they’re still far from being obsolete.
Plus, personalization isn’t such a big worry. Marketers tend to fixate on the idea that personalization means that “some people won’t see my page 1 listing”. But personalization is driven by what the user wants to see, based on their prior search activity. If that person no longer sees our promotional listing, chances are they weren’t interested, and weren’t going to click on it anyway.
So, yes: fewer people will see some of our client listings, but the click-through will stay the same, and maybe even improve.
Lastly, from one marketer to another: some SEO consultants have started to sensationalize issues to get attention and stand out from their competition. Heather got an earful of this at a recent conference, something to the effect that “your SEO company is negligent if you’re not in Google Base.”
Yeah, missing that 0.003% market share is really killing our clients.
