Google has rolled out Personalized Search recently. Basically this means if you have any sort of Google account (GMail, AdWords, Groups, Alerts, etc.), Google will save by default your search history and then start showing you results that are tailored to the sites you visit the most.
What does this mean for the rental ad industry? The way I see it is–the rich get richer.
Take a property manager that has been using RentalHouses for years. She decides she might look around for another site to advertise with and does a search for “xxx rental homes”, where xxx is her city.
Because she has visited RentalHouses hundreds of times before, Google says “She must really like RentalHouses, so lets make RentalHouses #1 for her, even though RentalHouses may not be #1 for anyone else.
A site like mine might never get noticed even if I do make it to #1 in a year or two. This is frustrating.
Does it seem fair that the big rental sites keep getting bigger and bigger? Is Google giving them competitive advantage?
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6 users responded in this post
This is very interesting. How long will the “memory” last? Will it last year after year, or even 6 months for those residents that move frequently? Are any other search engines doing the same thing?
Google loves to keep data forever if that answers your question.
I believe Google is the first to do this.
Yahoo is has just ad0pted this model as well…
Avid Reader (I like that title!),
Do you know when Yahoo started this?
This is a problem not just for blogging. Researchers sometimes use google as a starting point too. If google only shows you sites you have already seen, there will be no way to get new content on the internet.
- Adam
One step forward…two steps back!
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