This article is continued from page one, Recap of SES 2005 Session-Personalized Search and Search History.
Audience Q and A
How many estimated users are actually using My Jeeves and My Google? These numbers are not public; suffice it to say that it's looking good.
Is there a way to figure out how many people have bookmarked a site in their browsers? It's possible; you can do a link analysis. Yahoo mentioned that you can trust votes in a social community such as created in My Web 2.0, in fact, trust is implicit in order for it to work, but in open search you have to be much more careful of who you're giving bookmarks to. Danny Sullivan remarked that it's much easier to determine clicks rather than determine bookmarks. Yahoo stated that clicking also attracts spam, and really the user does not know if a site is any good until they've visited the site itself. A9 pointed out that a personalized toolbar is invaluable in order to create bookmarks and share them.
What is the future of "sliders", a la Yahoo Mindset? Yahoo directly addressed this question, stating that "the product has content classification", and probably won't launch as a full-blown production, but it's good as a prototype. Google answered that it has flair for the user, but it doesn't make a lot of practical sense. Ask noted that simplicity is #1 in search, and a slider potentially gets in the way of what people are used to seeing. Danny Sullivan made a good point that perhaps a slider would be better utilized in local search listings.
Does personalized search skew how search marketers can measure ranking success? Danny Sullivan noted that personalized search does necessarily alter rankings. Yahoo stated that personalized sesarch gets you better results, which would eventually equal more targeted traffic since you can better focus your ad campaign. Google mentioned that in ten years it would be hard to imaging that personalized search won't be the norm. It's going to go from rankings and conversions to clicks and conversions, and it's not going to be about rankings anymore - it's about conversions, or sales.
There was a lot more to the Q and A, but these were the cream of the crop questions. Personalized search is here to stay, and I for one am excited to see what will happen in the future with it.
