What Will Google SERP Changes Mean for Reputation Management?

I think that the bottom line hear is that people are getting far too worked up over the voting up/down thing.

1) Search algorythms will still be the first ranking factor
2) Good SEO will still lead to good SERP’s
3) If they vote you down, they’re not likely your target customer anyways

The fundamentals of good design, content and ability to convert will still reign supreme. Don’t get the knickers in a knot.

I think as long as your website / blog provides great content that readers find valuable, you have nothing to worry about… after all, this is Google’s ultimate goal to provide a searcher great content.

Is this really a significant problem? Google is still ranking sites in their database and to be voted off you still have to appear in the SERPs to start with. I don’t see any problem there that would spell the end of SEO. Similarly, I don’t see any immediate problem with their SearchWiki because it is by default user specific. According to a post by Matt Cutts he states :

“And just to dispel one more misconception that I saw a few people speculate on: if user A edits their search results, it doesn’t affect the search results for user B.

There is an option for users to go check out notes left by other users, but that requires additional explicit work–by default, users don’t see other users’ notes. And even if you do the work to see other users’ notes, other users’ changes don’t affect your search rankings.”

Now, if Google does start to use this stuff to modify their SERPS universally then you have a problem.

Just as I feel confident in what I’m doing the rules all change! I’m one of the little guys working my butt off just to try and make a living online and these changes always seem to crop up right about the time I say “Whew I’m on top of it!”

As a small retailer I believe these changes will be the worst thing google could do. The main benefit for businesses online is to reach a much bigger potential customer base. In the short term the consumer who wants everything new and always uses whatever ever comes out. You know them. They are the ones who would buy something that didint work if people were discussing it. Anyway, these planks will start using the google wiki and tell everyone how amazing they are.
However, the regular joes like you and I will not want to peronalise our results as we want the best deal all the time. By this I dont mean the cheapest. I mean the world is changing. The global credit crunch is forcing this change. Google are shooting from the hip on this one. They are after confusing the SEO world so companies panic and buy adwords. Google is suffereing no matter how much they may makle out they are immune. They are only immune whilst they can move the posts to suit their own objectives. Once consumers realise that the new google doesnt really show them what they want they will change what they do. It looks like google is more focussed on stopping SEO companies taking a share of the money from business than giving the user the best experience. In my opinion this will be the biggest mistake google could ever make. Search is changing and the king is loosing his marbles. I think Google will lose their crown if they pursue their current routes. Google needs to remember the customer put them on top and can easily take the crown from them if they don’t give them what they want.

I handle both SEO and reputation management for one of my clients.

Unless I missed something I didn’t see anywhere that people’s personal opinions will affect the default SERPs.

So let’s say someone searches for dry cleaners. They will get the standard 10 sites that everyone else will get the first time. So if you’re on the ball with your SEO nothing will change.

Next, what percentage of people will actually rearrange their results?

I don’t believe people are going to think, “well I might search for dry cleaners again in the future so let me take some time to clean these results up.”

The one think I think some people might do is delete results that are irrelevant to them so that they have more real choices on the page while they are searching.

Am I wrong about this? Did I miss the part where my choices will affect your results?

For me its a case of Google trying to use personalized search in order to:

1. Kill off organic SEO. After all, lets face it, no matter what Google tells us via their public relations officer Matt Cutts, they don’t like SEO’s attempting to manipulate their serps. Period.

2. Increase revenue from adwords. By doing this they are hoping that organic SEO will have such little impact that it will drive webmasters and site owners to resort more to the use of their money spinning ad network.

I personally think that their algo isn’t as great as they make out and a lot of human intervention is required in order for them to keep up with the abuse out there from blackhats etc. I think they are finding it impossible to police the organic serps and will continue to resort to these tactics until they get TOTAL control over their results.

What is the point of all this? They may aswell be a “directory” not a search engine. It seems to me that google are panicking about facebooks future and that facebook are growing so much, and are starting to move in different directions based on social search. If they do , I think google will be a dead horse, and algorithms will be less useful as they are now.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see the evil Google monster eating our children here.

From what I understand users will have to log in, then do an organic search in order to find results which they can then personalize. Once they start organizing, they will still only be organizing the results that appear high on the results page anyway.

There is still going to be a need for proper SEO work on sites in order to have them ranked highly enough for a keen surfer to then start adjusting. That adjusting is only for their own uses anway, so the user will just be looking themselves for the most relevant or useful pages. Any surfers you lose on their subsequent searches because of this adjustment is a surfer you would have been ignored by anyway.

I think this is a good thing if they maintain these parameters. it improves search engines for individual surfers and downgrades black hat results for motivated individuals.

Less useful and potentially dangerous is the move towards using comments for search results. Google should know by now that 75% of the garbage on the web is the result of 5% of users. Black hat SEO and disgruntled minority users will skew results to the extreme. This is such a bad idea that I’m astounded Google is going with it. I think we’ll soon see them come to their senses and remove the option to see other user’s comments but only after a regrettable period of time in which they receive a lot of complaints.

Ben Lewis
Lewis Communications Corp.

I think SERP is a key factor for any site to have great exposure. Great position results in great traffic to your site. If you are not ranking for the keywords your site is modeled around, how will you be seen? I think all webmasters are still using keyword strategies for site visitors, I myself do. Currently I am using this very useful tool at http://www.getserp.com to help me with keyword targeting and position analysis. Check it out for yourself, see where your sites are ranking in the web.