Personalized Search: A good first look

David Harry over at HuoMah tends to spend a lot of time looking over upcoming patents and spotting trends before they develop.

I’ve spent a bit less time looking in to the challenges of Personalized Search (PS) than David, but I think that as long as you are keep a firm watch on normal search practices, and are getting involved in some forms of social media, you shouldn’t suffer from the new model at Google. But to really capitalize on personalized search you are going to need to take a closer look at the things going on in social bookmarking and link sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

My only concern with personalized search is that so many people are having it forced upon them without even realizing it. With Google having so many properties these days, GMail, Google Reader, etc., and each signup having personalized search turned on by default, you may find that the old rules have changed without any warning to you are your readers/viewers.

Personalized Search is going to force us to look more closely at Social Media and will further lead to the group already there treating markets even more like pariahs than we already are. The floods have already started overwhelming sites like Digg in an effort to get links, but as those become more and more needed to rank well it will only get worse. And the blame won’t fall where it belongs, Google, but rather on those people working hard to chase their ever moving cheese.

If you want to read more about personalized search and what you can expect from it, give David’s eBook, Personalized Search for Marketers, a read. He takes personalized Search apart and gives you a break down of what is going on now and what you can expect to see in the near future.. I think it’s worth the read and besides, it’s free so you can’t complain about the price.