Caterpillar Cowboy

Here’s what this means: no two people will see the same web. Once a single search would do the trick - and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work. Now, with this, everyone is going to start tweaking their searches in real-time. The reason this is a game changer is feedback. When you get feedback, you change your behaviors. Think about it. When you push a door and it doesn’t open quickly, you push harder. When you try to drive a car up a hill and it doesn’t go as fast as you would like, you step on the gas. Feedback changes your behavior. Google Instant means no one will see the same web anymore, making optimizing it virtually impossible. Real-time feedback changes people’s behaviors.

Sorry, but I don’t agree at all. This isn’t personalization. Instead it’s: 1) Increasing the number of queries people do, 2) increasing the number of terms per query, 3) reducing the amount of time people spend looking at queries with poor results. 

I think it’s a fantastic improvement and will help people sniff out the “right” search terms faster. But to say it’s personalization is stupid link baiting. Google does do personalization (taking into account your past searches, social graph, etc), and this isn’t it.

(Source: soupsoup)