Personalized search is a Yandex algorithm that generates search results taking into account the individual data of each user: browsing history, behavior on sites, interests, geographic location, etc. In total, there are more than 200 factors that a search engine takes into account when personalizing

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Why personalization is needed

The main goal of the algorithm is to provide users with the opportunity to receive better and more interesting content for keywords. If a person has just started using Yandex to search for information, personalized results will begin only after the system has collected enough data. The search engine analyzes not only behavioral factors and browsing history, but also browser bookmarks.

Personalization generates search results in such a way that when entering a request, the user receives information that is within the scope of his interests, or thematically close to his request. For example, when searching for a product, the algorithm will offer a person various promotions, discounts, additional accessories and other services that may interest him.

Personalization occurs regardless of how the user formulates the request. The algorithm takes into account:

• Typos and slang.
• Words used by people from various social groups: youth communication style, professional language, etc.

Personalization benefits not only the users themselves, but also the site owners. There are great prospects for them in the field of search advertising, traffic has become more targeted, and the overall competition for search phrases has noticeably decreased.

Yandex SERP personalization results cannot be stable and are constantly changing in accordance with user behavior. If a person went to a page from organic search results and immediately closed it, then the page positions will go down. And on the contrary, if the user liked the resource, he spent a long time on it, added the link to the bookmarks, then in the future it will be shown to this user by related queries, and his rating in the search results will increase.

Disabling personalization in Yandex

If you do not want the search to be personalized, you can disable this feature in the system settings. To do this, go to the settings section; you will find a link to it under the search results in Yandex.

Uncheck the boxes next to "Include my search history in results" and "Show my favorite sites in suggestions."

Remember that your previous activity will remain in the search engine's database and the computer's IP address will continue to influence the search results. Therefore, you can use.

Why should an optimizer get rid of personal results?

Sometimes personalization gets in the way of SEOs and site owners.
For example, he wants to know what position in the search results is occupied by the promoted site, but sees personalized biased results. If he often visits this site or resources with a similar topic, then the position will be higher than in the results of other users for the same request. To see the results without taking into account individual data and the history of previous visits, you must turn off personalization.

Benefits of Search Tips for SEO Pros and General Users

For Yandex users, personalization can facilitate the process of finding information even at the stage of generating prompts.

1. The previously entered query will be displayed in the prompts above.
2. If a person has previously gone to a site, then he will be able to open it in a browser with one click. Users can customize their search to suit their individual preferences and specify which sites should appear first in the list of suggestions.
3. When a person enters a query, the prompts are automatically adjusted to the relevant topic.

How to check SERPs without personalization

You can find out what positions the site occupies in several ways:

1. In manual mode, after disabling personalization in the account settings. Next, the query of interest is entered into the search engine and the position of the site is tracked. In this case, you need to use.
2. With the help of special programs that are installed on the PC. Among the most famous are CS Yazzle and SiteAuditor.
3. Using online services for monitoring, collecting and analyzing data on the effectiveness of search engine promotion: Topvisor, AllPositions, etc.

So you can get objective data on the positions of your site in the search results and, in accordance with this information, build the right promotion strategy.

What is Google Custom Search Engine?

To make it easier for your site visitors to find the information they are looking for, add a Custom Search Engine powered by Google algorithms to your site. With our proven technologies, users will receive high-quality and relevant results. In the Custom Search System, you can:

• customize the outer search boxes and results pages to match the style of your site;
• refine search results, use autocomplete and promote results to improve search performance for users;
• Analyze visitor behavior by linking SPP with Google Analytics;
• earn by participating in the Google Adsense program.

How is Custom Search different from Google Web Search?

A custom search engine can be used to find information across the entire Internet, similar to Google.ru. However, there are also differences. Your SPP:

• gives the results from your site a higher priority;
• does not support some, for example, personalized results;
• may show the user only a fraction of the total number of results in the Google index if more than 10 sites are searched.

Search engines primarily work for those who are looking for information - for ordinary users. And in order for such a user to be satisfied with the search results, search engines use hundreds of ranking algorithms. They also take into account the personal interests of each user - what they looked at, which sites they already visited, which ones they left quickly, and which ones they stopped at. The information is processed and taken into account when generating the issue for displaying to each user. This is called SERP personalization.

But for webmasters and site owners, personalization can get in the way. Remember the sensational story with SEO amulets? When a respectable lady was deceived by selling her amulets to promote the site and incense, which she burned and at the same time searched for her site in search of the necessary requests. As a result, the site came out on top, but, unfortunately, only in its personalized search results.

To avoid falling for the bait of personalization, turn it off. Then you will not jump for joy that your site is in 5th place for the request "buy blah blah", while for your customers it is not even in the top 20.

Disable personalization for Yandex

To disable personalization for Yandex, go to the search settings and uncheck the boxes:

Disable Google Personalization

There are two ways to turn personalization on Google, and you have to turn it off in different ways, depending on whether you are signed in to your Google Account at the time of the search or not:

If you're signed in to your Google Account:

If you are logged into your Google account, the history of your actions is recorded there. Disable recording. To do this, in the upper right corner of the search results page, click on the gear icon and select "Search settings":

Here in the "Personal Results" section, please do not show these "personal" ones and do not forget to "Save" the settings:

It's also worth clearing your search history. To do this, again, go to the settings through the gear icon and select the "History" item. A window will open with a record of your actions. In the upper left corner, click on the menu call icon and then "Select delete option":

Then confirm all the actions and your conscience of the story is clear.

If you are not signed in to your Google Account:

If you still do not have a Google account or you are logging in from a device / browser that you have not logged into yet, then Google takes personalization data from the cookies stored by your browser.

Here are quick instructions for clearing cookies for major browsers:

Is it possible to do without disabling personalization?

If you are struggling with personalization just to see the positions of your site for certain queries, then ... you are in vain. A slice of site positions in search can be done in specialized services. This will significantly save your time and help you understand whether the work done to promote the site is effective.

A selection of services that check positions, we did

If you have other reasons to turn off personalization ... then you can easily do so using the instructions above.

For quite a long time, search results depend not only on the user's query itself, but also on his past activity. This technology has been used by the largest search engines for several years - and quite successfully. That is, if you ask the same formulation from two computers, you can get completely different results.

It depends on the user's specific characteristics of working with search engines, or other personal factors - location, frequently visited sites, previous queries, and so on. Let's talk in more detail about why you need to personalize the Google search system, as well as about the customization options for the Chrome browser and even the "smart" Google Keyboard.

Basic terms

Personalization is a feature of modern search engines (and not only), through which a person can receive results that are as close as possible to his interests, location and other features. This innovation was implemented almost imperceptibly for most users - therefore, quite a few people know that their issuance is not universal.

Moreover, even some marketers, seo specialists and SEOs manage to forget about this most important aspect, as a result of which they draw erroneous conclusions about their SEO, real search positions for main queries and other key indicators. Modern Internet technologies offer a number of approaches to personalization - this applies not only to search engines, but also to ordinary sites, applications, landing pages, etc. We will briefly touch on this aspect, and then return to the specifics of Google.

So, most often, today's internet marketing uses geo-personalization by location. For example, a search engine determines your position on the map, and then offers you the nearest establishments or companies that match your query. Also, one of the forms of personalization, albeit with some stretch, can be called the function of integration with social media. For example, the ability to register and import data by clicking on the Facebook icon, Twitter, etc.

Of course, in the context of Google, personalization is often understood as the analysis of the history of previous searches. The more often you use the search engine, the more information about you goes into the database. Sounds ominous? Perhaps, but it helps the search engine to refine the search results by selecting the most relevant offers.

Google personalization options

Above, we examined in detail what personalization is by definition. So - the Google search engine, of course, also uses this technology, storing and analyzing your personal data to refine the search results and improve the user experience in many other aspects. For example, a search engine feed can display results from Google services and social networks that match your query. For example, typing in the phrase "events Moscow", you will see at the very top of the issue a link to your friend's birthday from the social network Google+.

For people who are not eager to throw away personal data, there is good news - all this can be turned off. The easiest way is to access the Internet through the "Incognito" mode provided by the Chrome browser. Or, just log out while surfing. If, when visiting the main page of Google, in the upper right corner you see a blue sign "Sign in", then you are not logged into the service accounts.

But the safest way is, of course, to turn off personalization entirely. Here is what the search engine help itself advises for this:

Now let's look at the other side of the term. How to customize your browser and what are the benefits of a smart keyboard from Google.

Personalizing Chrome

For users for whom careful customization and personalization of google chrome is important, there are really great opportunities open up. The browser allows you to add special applications useful for a wide variety of activities, install themes, extensions, add several users (so that everyone working at the computer can log in from their account).

See for yourself how these features are described on the Chrome promotion page:

Working with Google Keyboard

We are talking about a "smart" keyboard, which at one time was positioned as the most "classic", "clean" - in other words, the most suitable for Android platforms.

Its main feature lies in the so-called continuous input - you can slide your finger from one letter to another, and the smart system itself offers options for words and expressions. This speeds up the process of writing messages - and if it is still too long, you can always use voice input. No separate personalization of the Google Keyboard is required - with regards to special settings. The system itself remembers the most frequent words, phrases entered by the user, and through this constantly refines the results.

Personalization of search results in Google

For a long time, Google has been generating search results in accordance with the preferences of a particular user, thanks to tracking his behavior after logging into Gmail account.

After it was introduced, there was talk that now clicks on it will greatly affect the results of sites. Those. on which pages they clicked on this button more, those pages will rank better. It was rather difficult to verify this.

But over time, it became clear that Google began to provide truly personalized search.

Previously, I did not pay much attention to this until I noticed an interesting thing yesterday myself:

Good or bad - time will tell.

A video from Google itself about personalized search:

Look also at the Google topic:

• - video.
• - translation of the official manual.

P.S. Immediately after this post flew, the position for the query "Competent selection of keywords" flew from 11th to 20th. What an irony of fate ...