This is a big thing as Google is renowned for being tight-lipped when it comes to actually speaking to someone on the inside. There were around 400 people attending the event and there were presentations from some of the personalised search engineers. There were two main topics covered – Personalised search and Fluctuation in rankings – here’s a brief overview of the content:-

Personalised search
Personalised search is Google's attempt to show you more relevant results by learning about your search habits and tracking certain elements of your search behaviour. If you have a Google account and the Google toolbar installed, then Google will be able to track things like your search history, your bookmarks, sites you’ve visited and other information. This information can be added to your personalised iGoogle homepage if you wish and is a good resource if you want to look at your search behaviour or need to find a website you just can't remember the address for but you know you've been there before.

I found it particularly interesting as it made me think about websites and a user’s use of websites in a whole new light. Before we delve into how you can improve your website for personalised search, let’s look at the factors that influence someone's personalised results.

User location
Google will change someone's results depending on their location and the information they're looking for. For example, if someone is in the US and searching for information about Brisbane, Australia (Brisbane is also a suburb in America) chances are that Google will skew results to be more biased on Australian results as this was the previous search behaviour displayed by the user.

If you're targeting a specific country or area of the world, you can geo-target your website through Google Webmaster Tools. This is very handy if you have a .com domain or your website is perhaps hosted in another country.

Another interesting thing I learned is that you can actually geo-target subdomains as a separate item. For example if you have a website that's targeting AUS, the US and the UK, you could have a subdomain running for the overseas websites and geotarget these to the corresponding countries. (Please note that geotareting through Google is only available for top level domains like .com or .org – if you have a country extension like .au you will automatically be targeted towards Australia.)

Local search
It was interesting to learn that local search can also play a role in how personalised data gets displayed to users. This makes sense because when you're searching for a tradesman or shopping centre, chances are you're going to be looking for something within a certain geographical area. Here are some of the things you can do to help your site show in local search listings:-

• Add your business to the Google Local Business Centre. Adding your business to this facility will give you more opportunity to show up when someone is doing a local search. Have you ever done a search for a local product or service and gotten a result like this?
  
  
  
  These results are pulled from Google Maps and Google Local Business Centre data, so adding your business to this service is highly recommended. You don't even have to have a website. If you want to add your business here's the link to the Google Local Business Centre.
• Another way to help your local listings is to add phone numbers into your meta data like your description tags and on the pages of your site. Adding your physical location into your website will also help.
• If you can get your customers to leave comments and reviews on your local listings this will help users to make a choice when reviewing local listings.

There were many other areas covered in this presentation however I will cover these in later articles as I feel they warrant an article all of their own.

Fluctuation in rankings
The next session in the presentation talked about rankings and why they fluctuate. Many people start to worry if their website is ranked number 3 and suddenly drops to number 7. This is very normal and most SEO's will know this. Many people new to the web will do what I call "rank watch" (constantly watching their rankings for improvement or variations) which in my opinion is a complete waste of time as search engines are fluid, organic things that grow and change, so fluctuations are a given. That said, here are some reasons given by Google as to why your site may move about in rankings:-

Duplicate content
You may have duplicate content on your site. For more information about duplicate content please go to our article called What is duplicate content?

URL canolicazation
This is where multiple urls on your site have the same content on them or all point to the same page. See the article listed above for more information about this.

Syndicated content
If your website content or RSS feed is being syndicated by other websites and you're not attributed as the source, this may cause issues with duplicate content and fluctuations in your rankings.

Competition
Your competitors might have been doing some SEO on their sites making your site drop in rank.

Changes in search trends
There may be changes in what people are looking for. The example that was given was that now the number one car on www.drive.com was the Prius, not a large hummer-like vehicle. Google notices these changes – sites can drop out and new sites show up.

Breach of webmaster guidelines
Has your site breached any of the Google Webmaster Guidelines? This may have an effect.

These were some of the items that were listed by Google as reasons your rankings may have changed. What can you do about these things? Well Google were also kind enough to give advice on things you can do to improve your website rankings in Google.

• Reconsideration request
  If you find that your website has been booted out of Google or you have done something that is against the guidelines, you can fill out a reconsideration request after you have made changes to ensure you meet the guidelines.
• Make your site a 'thought leader'
  Google say that more people visit sites that are seen as thought leaders. Make your site into the best it can be about your product or service and you will be sure to get more visitors and stable rankings.
• Create original tools, widgets or mashups
  Creating a great Google Gadget or a mashup that's useful for people will drive more taffic to your site naturally. Not only that but you're more likley to get great backlinks out of it too!
  If you're interested in making your own gadgets or mashups check out these sites. (Some of these services you don't need to know any code!)
  http://www.popfly.com/
  http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/
  http://mashupawards.com/
  http://www.webmashup.com/
  
  
• Geotargeting and localisation
  By geotargeting and localising your website not only will you get more relevant users directed to your site but you won't be competing on a national level for keywords that bring untargeted traffic.

So that's an overview of the hour myself and about 400 other people spent with 12 Google engineers.  Sometime in the near future I’ll be publishing a list of Q&As that were covered in this Google webinar – will keep you posted via the SEOhub newsletter.