(Coverage of SMX West continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Horling spoke to a crowd looking to get a better understanding of personalized search and Google’s SearchWiki, launched last November, which allows users to customize and comment on Google search results. When logged into their personal accounts, users can move results up or down or remove them altogether.

That’s potentially bad news for webmasters who’ve earned or gamed their way to the top of the results, and probably very good news for those unable to crack the result that gets the vast majority of click-throughs and visibility.

The reasoning behind the feature is fairly obvious: Not one result works for everybody. This SMX session was opened with a Google search for “smx,” a prime example of the ambiguity associated with search. Results bring back the conference at the top of course—this is an SEO/SEM conference—and even the second result, but some users may be looking for the Santa Maria Airport (SMX on their ticket), or for Smithway Motor Xpress for freight trucking.

Bryan Horling

SearchWiki manager Corey Anderson says there are other reasons Google was interested in personalized search. SearchWiki allows the search giant to conduct user studies in the field and crunch user feedback. After a few months of operation, Google has discovered that a large fraction of users are attempting to re-find websites previously visited, Anderson said. They also discovered users liked the ability to add, delete, re-rank and comment on search results.

“Many searches are inherently ambiguous,” added Horling. “Getting the right results sometimes calls for information about the user.”

There are positive and negative aspects of personalized results for the search engine marketing industry. On the negative side, personalized search makes it harder to collect metrics—personalized results are password protected, after all.

On the positive side, it makes it easier for users to find websites they like and match their intent. And that’s good for return business/visits, and, presumably, for conversions.  
 

Do you like SearchWiki? Do you enjoy having the power to remove results from your search results pages? Now you can do so in style by having a sound effect play along with the animation whenever you remove a result.

Recorded by our co-founder Sergey Brin himself, this sound effect is sure to please!

The feature appears to be a limited test, which does not work for everybody. It works for me, but Barry Schwartz says at Search Engine Land that he is not getting any sound. Tech Crunch provides a video that displays the sound, which seems to only contain one effect, for when the removal of results. Perhaps in the future they will add more sounds to different SearchWiki functions.

The sound is "cute" and all, but I don’t think it’s going to win over too many people who are skeptical of SearchWiki’s usefulness. The majority of commentary I have encountered regarding it is not very positive. There is basically, an "it wasn’t broke so don’t fix it" kind of mentality with regards to Google’s search results.

Nevertheless, change is on the horizon, and while SearchWiki does not affect regular Google results yet, there is a possibility that it will factor into them in the future, creating reputation management nightmares (as Jill Whalen puts it) for a lot of people.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are going to get a lot more personalized moving into the future. It’s already started, but will continue to become increasingly noticeable. This raises some questions not only about SEO and ranking, but how one manages their online reputation. The fact that different people will be seeing different results in a search for your name or your company’s name is going to throw a few forks in the spokes of the online reputation management process.

SearchWiki

Google recently launched SearchWiki, a way for Google users to rearrange their own search results and vote specific results up or down, leave comments, etc. This is one element of personalized search that has some industry professionals a little worried.

"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," High Rankings CEO Jill Whalen recently told me. "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."

It’s going to affect how marketers help their own clients maintain positive reputations as well. WebProNews Blog Partner Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim, who created the online reputation-monitoring tool Trackur, talked a little about this with me.

"It’s certainly something to be concerned about–especially when you consider that Google hasn’t placed much constraint on its use," he explains. "For example, what’s to stop a competitor’s employees from littering SearchWiki with negative ‘reviews’ about your business? How will that be policed? Google has indicated that SearchWiki data may be included in the regular algorithm in the future, but has been somewhat vague about how companies can address falsely posted comments."

The future isn’t necessarily all bad for reputation management though.

"On the other side of the coin, we have Google’s plans to further personalize search results based upon an individuals preferences and search history," Beal tells me. "I’m intrigued by a number of possibilities here, not all of which are negative."

"First, one web site’s ‘vote down’ is another’s ‘vote up,’" he explains. "Think about it. OK, so a user could vote down your web listing, but they could just as easily vote down your competitor. Now, instead of spending endless nights worrying about how to move from #2 on Google to #1, your target customer just did the job for you–albeit confined to their search browser only."

"Secondly, let’s go with the worst case scenario and assume that a user voted down your listing in Google," Beal continues. "They would have done that anyway! OK, so now they have the option to actually vote you off the Google ‘island’ but prior to this feature, they were mentally excluding you anyway–so you’ve not lost much."

As has become popular opinion of where Internet marketing will go as a result of Google’s changes, people are going to have to start worrying less about where their site is ranked in Google, and more about analytics, and how their site is presented.

"Businesses will finally realize the vital importance of not just ‘ranking’ but also displaying a compelling TITLE and description/snippet," Beal says. "If a searcher’s finger is hovering over the voting buttons, you want to make sure that your listing is enticing and engaging. A TITLE stuffed with keywords might get you to #3 in Google, but if the guy at #8 has a really engaging offer in his TITLE–you get voted down, he gets voted up."

The truth of the matter is, nobody really knows for sure what new online reputation management strategies are going to have be implemented when things like intent-based search and personalization become the everyday norm. I would venture to say however, that Internet marketers are going to need to be savvy in the reputation management area. Perhaps more so than traditional SEO. We’ll see where it goes.

Search is said to be going in a more personalized direction. Different people are going to get different results when they search for something on Google. Between SearchWiki and their behavioral-based SERP delivery, people are going to get results that are relevant to their specific tastes. That is the theory behind the concept at least.

Will Niche Search Engines Lose Traffic?

Frankly, I don’t use many of them incredibly often (there are a few), and they are seldom mentioned in search market share reports. I believe they are mostly used in scenarios where you want to find a broad range of information under a specific category or genre. If it is a category that you are really interested in and search on a daily basis, you are theoretically going to get these kinds of results from Google as a result of their behavioral-based plan. It could cut into whatever market share niche engines already have.

Will Niche Search Engines Gain Traffic?

On the other hand, it could potentially drive traffic to niche engines. If Google is delivering you results based on past behavior, you might want to go elsewhere to get something a little fresher on some topics. In other words, if Google is excluding some results in favor of results it thinks you would rather see, you may be inclined to go somewhere else to get the results you are missing out on.

I can see it going either way. It’s hard to say how it will shake out before it really goes full throttle. A lot of it will depend on how well Google truly gets to know you. I suspect there will be a lot of privacy talk on this subject, but that’s a different subject altogether.

Do niche search engines have anything to worry about?

What are your thoughts on this? Will personalized search lend to increased or decreased niche search engine use? Will it have any effect at all?

Of course reputation management is something to think about as a result of these changes as well.

UPDATE:  Newsfactor reports that as Searchwiki is being phased in, SearchMash ("Google’s experimental search interface, a non-branded search engine that Google used to test new technology") is being phased out.

SearchWiki also allows you to post comments on results, such as notes to yourself, but you can also see what other people have said about them as well.

In addition, you can add and remove sites to your liking. So for example, if I want to search for my own web presence, but want to filter out other Chris Crums that aren’t me, I can do so.

To get a better idea of how this thing works, watch the following video:

Search Gets More Dynamic

"This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives," says a post at the Official Google Blog. "We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learnings into this release. We are constantly striving to improve our users’ search experience, and this is yet another step along the way."

What About Rankings?

Google makes it a point to mention that this will in know way impact rankings when other users do searches, so before anybody gets all worked up, don’t worry about that. But, this certainly does play into the personalized search scenario that can affect how those with Google accounts see search results. It seems that if they have already set a number of results to their liking, they are less likely to see results that would otherwise appear toward the top.

A New World of Search

The release of SearchWiki makes it pretty clear that Yahoo isn’t the only one doing compelling things with dynamic search. I think the next year or so is going to be the most interesting one we’ve had in a while when it comes to how we use search engines to get our results. With Yahoo obviously stepping up their efforts to change the game, I think we’re going to see some very cool things come out of the competition between the top two search engines.