The personalisation of search results is well documented and evidence of its arrival is clear to see particularly in the Google results. I have blogged in the past about the differing search results based on search history, the listings of site visits and also the use of IP information as a targeting tool.
But what does this all mean to advertisers? What impact is this going to have on your search marketing activity?
Position Variances
If the search engines are going to begin giving prominence to previously visited sites then you can expect variance in positions with then search engine results. For a user who has visited your site before you could be ranked top where as to a new user you could be lower down the results. This effectively is the same model as is used in the PPC listings with the metric click through rate (CTR) however this would occur at the individual level rather than the keyword.
If this begins to occur it will create confusion with advertisers as you will there will be no accurate measure of what position you are actually ranking in. This will make the performance metric of position redundant.
We are seeing this already in the PPC market with one user seeing an ad in a completely different position to another based on their search history. This makes managing a campaign much more complicated and needs to be fully considered when devising strategies.
Advance Targeting
On the positive note, this could, if used intelligently, allow advertisers to target their natural search campaigns to their key demographic. Although the basics of SEO will be needed to achieve a decent position in the first place once this is in place effective use of creative and website copy could lead to a increased performance for a particular segment and so increased positions. This will be dependant on the extent personalisation takes effect and will need a very clever implementation but should be possible.
I’m sure there will be more effects which come about as a result of the continued personalisation of results with in the search engines but for now these are the key two. What this space, it’s going to get increasingly complicated!