iGoogle Is Here - Google Is Expanding Personalization Efforts

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The moment that SEOs have dreaded is drawing closer: a world with totally personalized search results. And now Google is moving forward with their vision known as iGoogle. This means you won’t have the current one-size fits all approach to search that the company has always employed.

We want to personalize the traditional notion of search,” Sep Kamvar, lead engineer for the personalization push, told reporters. “I am an eclectic person. But everyone is. We can’t go about designing products for the average person.”

Reinventing the classic Google.com home page — with its simple, uncluttered design — the company is introducing features that range from colorful new Web page designs to helping users publish their own creative content.

Google is borrowing or reinventing ideas that have already become popular features on many social network sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Bebo and Photobucket, where users are encouraged to share their own creative work with friends.

Personalization is not new, but the push from Google to personalize results is new. This could severely change how anyone and everyone does “SEO” now, as you have to actually consider the user, because user’s can offer a lot of input concerning your website. In theory, at least, it should make it easier for bad sites to be identified and dealt with.

How it all shakes out will be interesting, but it must be said that Google doesn’t seem to do their best work when they’re “borrowing” ideas from others, as they seem to be doing here.

What do you think of personalization at Google (iGoogle)?

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