Personalized Search and What it Means to You Whether or not you are logged into any Google applications, Google search will now be more personalized than ever before. In the past, Google only kept track of your searches and clicks when you were signed in to ensure the most relevant results. This will continue to be based on Web History. Going forward, Google will now be placing an anonymous cookie on your computer when you are not signed in, so that it can deliver personalized results based on the past 6 months of collected data. This includes search terms and results you click on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). How does this affect you? Well, the search results will be more relevant, so it could actually save you some time. Personalized search results are also geographically targeted based on your IP address, which increases relevancy (who needs to find a dentist half way across the country?). Your privacy is still respected, as the cookies are anonymous. To read about … [Read more...]
Web Usability: How to Kill a Perfectly Good User Experience
By November 25, 2009 COMMENT(1)Web Usability: How to Kill a Perfectly Good User Experience I was recently at a major technology website trying to check the amount paid for a previous purchase. It was almost time to make supper and my husband had an appointment to get to, so I didn’t have much time. Luckily, all I needed was a dollar amount and I knew the company well enough to know right where to find it. This should have been a very simple, uneventful transaction that added to my overall experience with this company. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Poorly thought out marketing and a serious lack of web usability testing got in the way. The first problem was that I am still forced to login to my account with an email address that I abandoned over three years ago. Even though I changed my email address with this company right away, and I receive all their promotional emails at my new address, I have no choice but to login with an address that I no longer have access to. This always bugs me when I use their … [Read more...]
