Is Google Personalized Search the death of SEO?
Google just made Personalized Search universal: You don’t need to be signed-in to your Google account in order to see personalized results, but as a signed-out user you can get customized results based on 180 days of search activity stored in an anonymous cookie on your browser.
The difference between being signed-in or not, apart from being able to receive personalized results on any PC (instead of customized results based on someone else’s browsing activity on a shared computer), lies in the kind of data being tracked: Signed-in users will have any page they visit recorded by the Google Toolbar, unless they change Web History settings, while only searches and clicked results will be stored for signed-out users.
Privacy concerns have been addressed: Signed-in users can access and see past searches and viewed pages, while this is impossible to do for signed-out users.
How to opt out of Personalized Search?
The bad news is that your tin foil hat is useless now, you can throw it away recycle it. The good news is that you can easily turn the personalization off by removing Web History from your Google Account (you can also choose to pause Web History or select what to delete), or click on the Web History link on the top right corner of the SERP (View customizations appears instead when customized results have been just served) and choose to disable customizations if you aren’t signed in.
Deleting the cookie from your browser will automatically turn customizations on: This is useful if you want to restart Personalized Search afresh, but you need to remember disabling them again in case you aren’t interested in personalized results.
SEO is an ever changing process
Off site optimization and being active in social media are vital in order to maximize presence on organic listings, because great content on web pages is now competing with Real Time, Personalized and Social Search results.
PPC could have an increased importance in branding and SEO: High CTR would make websites more relevant in future searches and improve their rankings in natural listings.
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