SES, San Jose 2007: Personalization, User Search And Data Session

This year, Google made its personalized search service much more the default for many users. Other search engines have user data that could be used to reshape search results. This session looks at existing and possible moves in the space.

Moderator:

• Chris Sherman, Co-Chair, SES San Jose

Speakers:

• Jonathan Mendez, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, OTTO Digital
• Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite
• Dave Davies, CEO, Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc.
• Gordon Hotchkiss, President & CEO, Enquiro Search Solutions Inc.

Q&A Speakers:

• Sepandar Kamvar, Google
• Tim Mayer, Director of Product Management, Yahoo! Inc.

First to speak on Personalization, User Search And Data is Gordon Hotchkiss of Enquiro Search Solutions Inc.

What drives personalization?

• User volunteered information
• Search history
• Web history
• Community choices
• Task context
• Geo targeting
• Platform information
• Origin of search

The crux of the discussion on Personalization, User Data, & Search were:-

Personalization has changed the landscape of how people use search. Reports of Eye tracking conclude that after search became personalized, our focus has been turned towards organic listings while also giving predominance to the listings in the 3rd, 4th and 5th positions in the SERPs too.

In Google land, personal rank is a status of importance which are granted to people. As many websites today want to swap links with those of sites with hig page ranks, in the coming years webmasters will then want links from other websites with high PR.

Sepandar Kamvar of Google stated that Google favors building widgets. Besides the No.1 search engine is working on creating results for the keyword “Zero Word Query” with iGoogle.

Richard Zwicky, Founder & CEO, Enquisite states that if you want a rank in SERPs, the answer lies in ads. The future for SEOs is getting harder and harder. Therefore, optimization campaigns have to become more hi-tech for which one also requires good research tools and reports.

Tim Mayer says that yahoo! is focusing all its energies on Social Data. Use services such as del.icio.us, Sphinn, Digg, etc to advance yourself.

Make your visitors find the correct link to the site that they are seeking and this will better your chances of top return to SERPS.

IMAGE SOURCE: SE Round table

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