Google and other search engines, including Facebook, have been placing an emphasis on personalized search. This pleases many people, but this can also limit the information available to us, or make it harder to find information which makes us step outside our personalities and seek out new information or differing points of view.
Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org refers to personal search as ‘filter bubbles’ and according to him it editorializes available information. Links we click on more frequently rise higher in our searches and the ones we click on less get hidden away. The things that get hidden may have information we are seeking, but don’t realize because it ranks low, most people don’t go beyond page 3 when they search. The diversity of searches are being reduced or eliminated, because searches are catered to our personal biases. Bing has recently added the Facebook ‘Like’ button filter to its searches, which adds another social bias to the results we get when searching for information or businesses.
Personalized searches can inhibit the efforts of SEO optimization by filtering the information provided to internet users. A service or business we might have an interest in doesn’t rank high, and we miss them, because search engines determine what they show us based on search history. SEO optimization firms work hard to get information high in searches to accommodate their clients and potential customers, but all the filter bubbles can keep people from this valuable information.
