Google News
Google to Covertly Personalize Everyones' Search Results
Search Engine Roundtable reports a thread over Search Engine Watch Forums, summarizing Google's new patent for personalized organic results based on users' session history:
A system and method for using a user profile to order placed content in search results returned by a search engine. The user profile is based on search queries submitted by a user, the user's specific interaction with the documents identified by the search engine and personal information provided by the user. Placed content is ranked by a score based at least in part on a similarity of a particular placed content to the user's profile. User profiles can be created and/or stored on the client side or server side of a client-server network environment.
What's highly significant to SEOs, is that this would not be an opt in service; instead, all searches for all users would be personalised, possibly destroying the entire concept of search engine rankings. If and when this new algorithm gets implemented, and depending the the strength of the personalization, it could very easily turn the SEO world upside down over night.