Both SEO and PPC are important, but do you think one carries more weight than the other? Share your thoughts here.

That conversation extended into our comments. The general consensus seems to be that you should use both when possible, but that SEO is better for the long term, and PPC is better for quick results. These notions were backed up by both Michael Gray and Christine Churchill, who were on opposing sides of the debate at SES.

Gray and Churchill both shared their thoughts in more detail in two separate interviews for WebProNews. Gray noted that Google is making changes that could have some effect on the success of organic rankings. One of these changes is the introduction of personalized search to all Gooogle users. You no longer have to be signed in for Google to personalize your results, and that means it is much more important to get that first click from a user. Gray talks about this and the other change, being Google’s banning of AdWords advertisers with what he thinks is not the best communication.

Churchill elaborated on the usefulness of PPC to people who are just establishing themselves on the web. The reality is that SEO takes time, and while it is of great importance and provides long-term benefits, it is very hard to be competitive right out of the box.

When you have a brand new domain name, a new site, and no links, you’re probably going to have a hard time jumping up in the rankings for any competitive keywords. PPC lets you do it and start getting your ROI quickly. She also talked a little bit about flexibility vs. control between SEO and PPC.

Not everyone agrees that PPC should be used for a brand new site. One reader commented on our previous article:

SEO is an absolute must when dealing with new web sites. None of the search engines are going to rank you very high in the organic searches if you are not meeting their criteria. And…the Organic search results are 24 hours per day ads. Not so with PPC, unless you are dealing with an unlimited budget.

PPC should be used after SEO to target special sales, or services. It is a great way to help searchers locate your products when they are on sale, or your services when a special price can be obtained.

One thing to keep in mind, however, as Gray touched upon, and some other readers suggested, PPC can be used up front to help you determine the directions to take your SEO efforts in. You can use PPC quickly to determine what keywords convert better, and use that to your advantage in your optimization practices.

Do you think paid search is becoming increasingly important to marketing? Share your thoughts here.

Related Articles:

> Does an Organic Search Presence Help Paid Result Performance?

> Can You "Rank" in Google if Everyone Has Different Search Results?

> Optimizing for Mixed Media Search Results

Gray discusses a search for "ferrari development car," which returns 8 out of 10 results that are the same AP article on different sites. That almost sounds like…duplicate content.

"Well Eric I’m going to show you not only did you get it wrong , but you got it very wrong, not only are big brands just as responsible for the pollution of the internet, but Google is an enabler," writes Gray as he points to the above results.

Admittedly, when Schmidt made his statement, I agreed with him. In fact, I even wrote "I couldn’t agree more." I still believe that he was right when he said that the Internet is full of garbage, and brands are the solution.

However, Gray is also right to dispute this with the example he provides. I don’t take brands being the solution to mean that different brands providing the exact same content should rank higher than others simply because of their brands. The duplicate content has to be taken into consideration.

I also don’t take it to mean that the AP has to rank over a blogger like Michael Gray (not that he’s trying to rank for this particular example). To me, Gray represents his own brand, and he has certainly gained authority within his niche because he is well-known in the industry.

To me, in the Ferrari example, perhaps something from the car maker itself would have been more appropriate to rank higher. I won’t even say that the AP story shouldn’t have ranked. But the same story should probably not be ranked for 8 out of 10 results.

That said, I think brands do help users sort through the "cesspool." It’s about trust. Businesses and individuals need to build their own brands to establish that trust and authority.

So I decided to go down a slightly different path for this article. For this, I wanted to get the opinions of some big names in the field about what they thought the most significant things of 2008 were with regards to search, and what the biggest changes were from 2007 to 2008. I figured it would make for a more interesting article and certainly a less time-consuming one not only for me, but for readers as well.

Editor’s Note: It’s been a very interesting year for search, and the coming year promises to be even more so. This article looks at how some of the most recognizable names in the industry view the everchanging industry. Where it has gone and where it is going. What do you think?

And while we’re on celebrating the year coming to the end and the holidays, we’d also like to share this holiday greeting video with you:

Semantic and Intent-Based Search

I decided to start in-house and find out what our own Mike McDonald thought the most significant thing to the search industry was in the year 2008. "I think the biggest POTENTIAL event of ’08 was Microsoft’s purchase of Powerset," he told me. Now keep in mind (in case the emphasis wasn’t enough), he said potential, meaning it could have big implications for the search industry’s future. Powerset is all about language analysis and semantic search. "Semantic search and interpretive queries based on semantics are going to be big. Language and implied intent is a major direction for search moving forward," Mike said. "So, in my opinion, 2008 marks the start of the real race to a more language/intent/semantic approach to search."

There is no doubt that how we receive search results is in for some change. There has certainly been a lot of talk about it with regards to Google, and Yahoo too for that matter with their whole "open" strategy, but we haven’t heard as much about Microsoft on this. Mike may be on to something here. Microsoft no doubt hopes Powerset will be its ace in the hole to gain some search market share.

Personalization, Universal Search, and SearchWiki

Search Engine Roundtable Editor Barry Schwartz had this to say: "I think one of the most significant changes in 2008 was just about a month ago with the launch of SearchWiki in the search results.  Although I think the average searcher is not ready for it, it is here and there are no signs that it will be going away any time soon.  Not only does this give a searcher the ability to boost or remove search results, Google has admitted that they may be using data gleaned from SearchWiki to change the search results for everyone else.  So, I think that this, along with Universal Search, will have one of the most significant impacts in early 2009."

The mere fact that it is Google changing the way they deliver results is enough to make this significant. Google is obviously the top dog in terms of search market share (though not in every country), and most of us use it over its competitors. No matter what Yahoo, Microsoft or anyone else is doing, what Google is doing is going to have a tremendous impact just because its the one more people use.

"The biggest change is the SERP itself. With more universal search, more personalized search, and now SearchWiki, Google is training users to expect ‘more than 10 blue links’," says Atlas Web Service Owner and President Michael Gray. "Other search engines that don’t provide rich results are seen [as] behind the times."

"I’d say that the most significant thing to happen in the search industry in 2008 was the advent of more personalized search, and even more so, the new addition of SearchWiki showing up in Google," says High Rankings CEO Jill Whalen. "It’s too soon to really know what will happen with that, but my guess is that it will cause some reputation management nightmares for many companies."

This is a point that has crossed my mind, and one I intend to explore further in the near future. I think it will be quite interesting to see what kinds of reputation management changes will have to come into play as a result of the changing SERP strategies of the major search engines.

"The biggest change from 2007-2008 was the advent of Universal/Blended Search results which came out in May of 2007," added Whalen. "It has caused some urgency in companies to create multimedia content in order to have their images and/or video snippets show up in the search results."

The Economy and SEO

"In terms of the biggest changes, that might go as far to worry me a bit, is what is going on in the economy," says Schwartz. "We all know about the financial trouble Yahoo is going through to compete with Google and Microsoft.  Yahoo is struggling to survive, as opposed to struggling to even compete and that is scary.   Google, for the first time, is cutting back big time.  They even have decided to not give out holiday gifts this year  – which is significant, in terms of Google.  What type of impact will the economic turn down play in 2009 and search?   Will this impact SEO jobs?  I have seen more and more SEMs loose their jobs recently.  Will this stifle search relevancy?  These are my concerns."

These are certainly valid concerns. Changes in how search results are going to be delivered are going to be challenging for SEOs as it is. 2009 will definitely be a crucial year for SEOs in terms of staying on top of their game.

Community, Professionalism, Clients, and Browsing

"I would say the single biggest change in the field of SEO is the deterioration of the sense of community and professional decency in favor of self-promotion at any cost – where people promote spam reporting each other even when their own past reports were both damaging and inconsistent with search engine editorial policies," SEOBook Author Aaron Wall tells me. "The next biggest change would be Google launching a browser. They still have limited market share, but as they gain market share that gives them yet another dimension to view the web through, and gives them even more search market share."

Google’s Chrome browser could really turn into another big thorn in Microsoft’s side not only by dominating more search market share as a result of increased Chrome use, but obviously by cutting into Internet Explorer use, a browser that already had its fair share of competition from the likes of Apple, Mozilla, and Opera.

As far as the deterioration of the sense of community and professional decency, this is no doubt directly related to the growth in "social media marketing" and the lack of understanding of the goals of such on the part of many of the people engaging in it.

On the other hand, Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization CEO Dave Davies says, "The biggest change has got to be in the clients.  Clients are coming to us [SEOs] far more informed as to what they want and what the limitations of SEO are.  No longer are people asking for top 10 results for competitive phrases and disappointed when we tell them 3 months just isn’t going to happen.  They understand a lot more about what we’re doing and how long it takes."

Competition and Google’s Increased Domination

"I think 2008 might go down as the year Google moved into complete market share domination, not completely through their own doings, but because Microsoft and Yahoo! failed to reach a deal to combine efforts and because the market has been so tough on Yahoo! while both engines (and other tertiary engines like Ask.com) lost share to Google," says Wizard of Moz (SEOmoz) Rand Fishkin. "In 2007, I held out hope that together, these three – Ask, Yahoo! and Microsoft – along with the possible newcomer, Cuil.com, would have some positive impact in preventing or postponing a Google monopoly, but after 2008, I’m very skeptical that we’ll see anyone keep Google from reaching 90%+ search share in the next few years."

That doesn’t mean the competition won’t continue to try. Yahoo seems to be doing all it can with it’s open search strategy to bring new forms of relevancy to its search results, though its ability to steal away a remarkable amount of Google users remains to be seen.

"The Yahoo-Microsoft Merger That Wasn’t was the most significant thing, as it caused both companies to be weakened against Google and remains as the biggest doubt about their success, as the off-again, on-again rumors continue," says Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan. "Search marketers need healthy competition among the search engines, and the competition ain’t healthy."

Dave Davies also cited this. "Refusing a deal at $33/share and now sitting at around $13 has got to go down as one of the big ‘tragedies’ of 2008 in the search industry," he says.

Adjusting Focus

"The biggest change was probably more awareness that it’s not about getting more traffic but how to better convert the existing traffic you have," says Sullivan. "I hear more and more people paying attention to metrics, these days." I suspect this type of mentality will continue to increase as changes in SERPs render some traditional SEO tactics obsolete.

Another thing SEOs and Internet marketers are going to have to watch out for is what happens with regards to net neutrality. This issue isn’t always brought up in the search engine marketing discussion, but as Cindy Krum discussed with Abby Johnson) in the following video from SES Chicago, it should be.

"The victory of a Net Neutrality supporter in the Presidential race is also a significant event though many may not know it," says Davies. "If I had to say what will have the biggest long term affect on the search industry (and in fact the Internet as a whole) it will be this win by Obama.  No matter where you stand on the issue, the victory itself paints the picture of the future of the Internet."

Mobile Search

"In 2008, we finally witnessed mobile search go mainstream," says MordComm Co-Founder Boris Mordkovich. "With the arrival of the much anticipated Apple iPhone, followed by a collaboration between Google and T-Mobile on the G1, it is becoming clear that mobile devices are going to a whole new level – and taking the Internet and the search experience, as we know it, with them. The SEM marketing community has been anticipating this for quite a while, so I think that we are well prepared to face the challenges that lie ahead."

Wrapping up

In concluding, I would like to thank all of the people mentioned in this article for providing their opinions and insight into the everchanging search industry. I am very pleased with the variety of answers, and I feel it has made for a well-rounded outlook on where the industry is heading. 2008 has been an interesting year for search, but 2009 promises to really shake things up, and you can bet we’ll be there keeping an eye on it. Then, this time next year, perhaps we can reflect on how it all really went down.

What do you think was the most significant thing to happen in the search industry in 2008? What was the biggest change from 2007 to 2008?

A long time part of the ranking of sites for given keywords in search results includes inbound links. The more links connecting anchor text to a site, the more that site is seen as authoritative in the search rankings.

Move up the rankings to the first page of search results at Google, especially in the top five for a given query, and the relative traffic for the query should easily outdistance that from lower ranked search results.

To get that bonus placement, many webmasters over the years purchased links from other sites in order to gain an advantage. As the practice grew, even though links are not the sole arbiter of where a site ranks, Google began looking for ways to weed out these paid placements.

So when Matt Cutts followed up his chat with Eric Enge by advising people it would be a good time to drop new paid link reports on Google, Michael Gray responded with a lengthy complaint about Google’s chasing of paid links.

"Your rules are selectively enforced and you take an aggressive hard line stance against Internet marketers, while little Mary A-List gets off scot-free," Gray said of Google and its treatment of high-profile bloggers who receive valuable offline considerations in exchange for their coverage of companies.

Gray wants to see Google pursue the so-called A-List of bloggers, determine whether or not they picked up some kind of benefit in exchange for favorable blogging, and penalize them the same way Google penalizes link sellers.

"Why does Google aggressively go after the SEOs and ignore the PR people? Why do people continue to tolerate Google’s double standards and two-tiered justice?" Gray asked.

One might argue that quality comes into the equation. A link from a high-profile blogger to someplace of relevance and value means more to the person who discovers it than a link to a site that does not provide anything approaching an equally quality experience.

In either example Gray gave, PR-purchased blog coverage versus a webmaster to webmaster paid link opportunity, a benefit goes from one party to the other. The difference is no blogger worth his or her keyboard would ever admit to being influenced by the largess given out as part of a PR campaign.

A little equal treatment may be helpful. But Google will need an army of investigators to dig into even a small selection of high-profile blogs, in order to figure out if a relationship between a blogger and a linked site merits action.

We don’t see that happening for a reason beyond the obvious. Google wants to drive out the influence of paid links, but they don’t want to push the A-list of bloggers into simply using other means of getting the word out about their posts.

Imagine if the best way to figure out what a Gray or a Cutts had to say was by tracking the topics they cover without using Google search. Online forums abound when it comes to webmaster topics, of course. Social media and shared bookmarking sites each offer people the chance to be a network of like-minded interests.

Drop in participation on a messaging service like Twitter or FriendFeed, and there’s little reason to proactively search when relevance from either person arrives unbidden. Imagine that scenario, where for a particular interest, Google just isn’t as important.

Not every niche would draw similar interest; don’t look for Google to fold or for its founders and CEOs to give away their billions to live as fudge-cooking Trappist monks as search traffic falls to zero. The seeds to do more without Google exist. It’s up to people who hold views like Gray’s to plant and water them.

Twitter Logo
(Photo Credit: Twitter)

News of the Twitter Blacklist come via Twitterer Michael Gray, also known as Graywolf, whose invective against said moral authority is relayed in several succinct tweets, one of which denounced "delusions of power" among those who have declared themselves "the boss" of everybody.

Meanwhile TwitterBlacklist.com has identified not only 378 spammers, but also some "obnoxious people" so far, thanks to 10,000 daily hits, bandwidth cost donations appreciated for the public service.

Earle Martin and Randy J. Ray, the brains behind the blacklist, say they have identified two kinds of commercial Twitter spam: "the kind that follow lots of people, and the ‘stealth’ type that set up interlocking networks of fake accounts. You can see these on the list with a ‘follow factor’ of zero."

Martin and Ray, with help from Evan Prodromou have used the "follow factor" to determine a ratio by which to dig out various pigeonholes:

This class of people has been neatly described in terms of the ratio between how many they "follow" compared to how many follow them:

1:5 = twittercaster, 1:2 = notable, 1:1 socially healthy, 2:1 newbie or social climber, 5:1 twitter spammer

My own Twitter account holds about a 1:2 ratio of followees to followers, making me, according to their calculations, a "newbie or social climber." The truth is I’m more of a self-secure-voyeuristic-talk-when-I-feel-a-need-to type Twitterer. That means I use it to watch this corner of the world more than to talk to it, that I’m choosey about whom I follow, and couldn’t care less if others follow me back. But I’ve said all that before.

Martin and Ray readily admit not everybody will fit into these categories, though, and judge visitor submissions on an individual basis. This manual review has led to some obvious ones being blacklisted, like Anne O’Rexia, which holds only a declaration of not eating and a fortnight-old update about visiting a certain website, and BigPenis, which shrank away after being blacklisted, it would seem.

But some other ones on the list seem questionable and downright surprising. Sure, Amazon_Kindle seems blatantly promotional, and the tweets center around books available on Kindle. Is that spam or just smart marketing? A Twitterer called airbrushtanning seems on the surface a spitter (spam + Twitter?) for a spray-tan joint, but whoever operates it tells his or her eight followers about all kinds of different global news stories, too.

But WebmasterRadio, with 1,110 followers is there, too along with its 4:1 ratio and an announcement there’ll be no live Daily Search Cast today. I’ve been a special guest on WebmasterRadio, which obviously makes it legit . Aside from that, a good number of the tweets are decidedly un-spammy. Guess WebmasterRadio falls into the "obnoxious people" category. Suppose I might be next.

It might be fair to say the human aspect could be as unfair as the ratio-approach. But let’s, as we began, let Graywolf say it better and more succinctly:

twitterblacklist.com like some up tight condo board & home owners assoc telling everyone how tall to keep there grass or 2 paint there house

If he’d known he’d be quoted, he might have paid more attention to his homophones, but no harm no foul. Sometimes, I do it to.   

I enjoyed Michael’s many interviews on Local search, and learned much from his posts. He has earned a great deal of respect for his knowledge in this industry, no bones about it. (And here comes the but). But in his latest rant concerning Google and paid links, which was in response to Matt Cutts’ blog post about paid links, I think Michael’s perspective of the situation is just a bit too simplified. Now, I am not what anyone should consider a SEO, I am more of a SEO theorist at best. I have been learning SEO to selfishly help our businesses grow online, so I analyze SEO related, and most business related situations through my experience as a small business owner and based on basic economic principles. These lenses are the only ones I feel comfortable using when analyzing interesting business issues, just so we have established my perspective.

Michael Gray has a problem, as do many, with the apparent hypocrisy within Google. On one hand Google asks us to not buy or sell links, and to report sites which do one or both. Google tells us this will allow them to adjust a site’s rank, and relevance calculations accordingly, which needs to be done because links currently influence a site’s rank. So, in a paid linkless world, Google, in theory, would only be serving up the most relevant sites for each of our search queries. This of course is a preposterous dream, but we will leave this a discussion on another post, it still remains the stated purpose of Google’s actions.

Now to the other hand, while Google publicly denounces and punishes those dealing in paid links, they turn around and make piles of cash selling links for placement on their SERPS, as well as on other sites participating in their ad delivery system. On the surface there is definitely some cause for concern, and the appearance of impropriety is nothing short of glaring. It is this apparent conflict of interest which has Michael Gray and SEO minions riled up. “Why can Google sell links on their site, but we can’t sell them on our site?”, is their united cry. It is a good question, it is a fair question, and one I don’t think Google has quite answered completely or eloquently enough, which possibly increases the ire even more.

So from a simpleton’s business perspective, let me provide Google with a little defense fodder to this whole selling links dealio. I do not come at this as a dyed-in-the-wool Google Kool-Aid drinker, although I do use them as my primary search engine. Nor do I do this because Matt Cutts was genuinely cool to Michael Jensen and myself as we left PubCon one night. (Matt: we sincerely hope you are using and enjoying the SoloSEO swag item in good listening health.) We all enjoyed a few minutes crossing a busy street together, which in Vegas is a bonding moment, as is any other near-death experience.

The simple reason Google is trying to manage the paid link situation in this heavy-handed manner, is they are protecting their core business, that’s it… That’s the answer, nothing more to see here, move along. Now Gray suggests in his post that Google had in fact created the paid link mess, but this isn’t totally correct. Links have always been a good measure of a site’s popularity, many of us will remember all the early sites, which proudly displayed a “Links” page, I used those “referral” pages all the time. Links to companies, from companies I already trusted, made a difference to me, as I am sure they did to many. Even today, links out from trusted sites are a good referral, and lend credibility to that site. So not including the incoming links as a measure of a site’s quality would be a huge mistake for any search engine. Links must to be measured by all serious search engines attempting to deliver relevant results. And because links are beneficial to our site in terms of traffic and sales, some are willing to pay for them, that is why paid links abounds. So Google didn’t create the paid link mess, but by profiting the most through the selling of links, they definitely have the appearance of being holier than thou in their current stance. Perhaps Google and their billions don’t particularly care what we think, but I don’t think that is the base motivation behind their actions.

There is one area in this paid search mess which does concern me a bit… Google’s position on why buying links from them is ok, is based on the fact that when we buy from them, they know who we are, and they know not to pass page rank from those links, in order to keep their rankings systems pure. Here is the tricky part, if Google is squeaky clean, then the relevance and popularity of any paying client’s site should not be improved or effected, even though they are paying clients. We can only hope Google is ethical, and this is how it is handled, otherwise Google is no better than Tyco, WorldComm and Enron. Unfortunately, I know of some who now buy ads with Google, not only because they hope to get more traffic through SERPs, but also because they believe it potentially improves their organic positioning on the SERPs. So, in an odd way, Google actually profits from the appearance of a possible impropriety, most likely based on the current corporate climate, in which many of us just assume big businesses are greedy, lying, cheating, crooks. Pretty sad.

Ultimately we may never know if there is a benefit to a site’s ranking through advertising with Google, this is a part of Google’s “secret sauce” and protected as proprietary. So unless someone from the Google inside commits corporate hara-kiri, and tells the world how it all works, we will never know. So, in a perfect search world, paid links to Google would not have an effect on a site’s organic position within Google’s SERP, this practice, in principle, would be going against their core business model of providing the most relevant, naturally occurring search results for every search query.

For me personally, I understand why Google sells advertising… Because they can, and because it makes them loads of the green. We all would do the same if we could, in this regard the Google haters are being a bit ingenuous. I also understand why Google tries to manage the paid links conundrum, in a sense, to protect and improve their ability to provide their clients with the best search experience possible. We can only hope Google is being responsible in keeping the two practices mutually exclusive, and not influencing results based on their paying client list. It is also easy to understand why many are suspect of Google, there have been so many instances of corporate greed in the past, that many are cynical, rightly so. But not to worry, history has shown us again and again that business is the survival of the fittest. And the fittest companies are the ones that do things ethically and honestly for the long term. Eventually the law, or competition puts the fakers/takers in jail, or out of business. It has always been that way, it doesn’t matter the market, it doesn’t matter the product or service, and it doesn’t matter the company, eventually time runs out. We will know at some point in the future if Google is doing what they claim to be doing, or if they are truly are as slimy as some believe them to be. In the meantime, while Google carries their big stick, we might want to think twice before buying links, not everyone at Google is as pleasant as we found Matt to be.

I think that SEOs have such a small amount of actual advice that they never say anything in these panels/clinics because if they did you wouldn’t need to hire them. I’ve seen a half dozen SEO-related panels over the year and it’s always the same thing… like some infomercial where they will tell you their five secrets… IF you give them $199.95.

Well, them’s more fightin’ words. Michael Gray, also known as GrayWolf, decided to give the SEO treatment to Mahalo, free of charge. Gray found numerous SEO mistakes in his detailed and lengthy report (which becomes a great tutorial, too).

The fun part of Gray’s post is where he calls out code that shows an interest in being ranked in the search results:

It’s kinda hard to make the claim that you aren’t interested in SEO when this is a comment on your page <!– Main Content for serps ***********************–>

Gray concludes with this explanation:

Why did I spend the time writing this? I know you’re a smart guy, and just because you happen to have run into some sleazy SEO’s in the past doesn’t mean we are all bad. We’re no different than any other profession, there are good people and bad people, but it’s unfair to critcize an entire industry just because of a few bad apples. I also would like to think that you’re a big enough person to realize when you’ve made a mistake, and aren’t afraid to admit it.

Well, we’ll see, won’t we?

Gord Hotchkiss made a few observations about personalization changing search. Personalization is an approach that Google wants people to embrace through its Web History service.

Gord thinks optimizing through personalization will be more about themes that keywords. Beneficial sites will work on understanding user behavior better to provide them more relevant results. Black hats will try to take advantage of emerging issues and create buzz sites that certain personalized searches will find.

Michael Gray pointed out something regarding Google. Although Google’s guidelines say one should not use software to increase a ranking, he thinks using Google’s Toolbar and its personalized search do that anyway.

Michael has a bit of an issue with Google. He thinks Google is using personalized search to create Google junkies of people subscribing to Google product after Google product to influence and enhance their searches.

Tim Mayer of Yahoo Search looked at the broader concepts of personalization, and talked about how Yahoo sees the concept. To them, social media is in some ways an offshoot of personalized search. However, there is the element of user trust that isn’t taken into account with that view.

“One of the big trends we see in search right now is understanding the user query better,” he said of Yahoo’s observations.

Tim also suggested that for SEO, one should be thinking about giving the search engines enough content to determine the topicality of the page. Socially influenced results are simply going to play a larger role in search, inspiring a need for better content as well.

Matt Cutts said personalization should not be a surprise to search observers, as it has been discussed for a long time now. Personalization will not be the death of SEO, either, as some believe.

If anything, he remarked, personalization changes the game a little bit.

Although Michael remarked that the Web History service is difficult to turn off in Google, Matt noted how the attribute [&pws=0] can be appended to any Google query (ex. http://www.google.com/search?q=guild+wars&pws=0) and personalized search will be off for it.