Personalized Search Impact on B&B Websites

At the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) Conference in NYC which I attended this past October, Google announced its intention to implement something called “personalization” via their new Chrome browser.  Personalization is the process of profiling searchers by their demographics and interests based on past searches. The purpose is to return search results that are likely to be of more interest to each individual.  For example, if a potential guest types into Google “New York City B&B” and they have also searched for “yoga” in the past, the search engine will return a B&B Website that also features yoga in New York City at the top of the list before other B&B’s in NYC. That is how personalization works.

The implication for your B&B Website is simply this.  If Chrome is successful, B&B’s Websites that have been optimized for special interest keywords as well as general B&B keywords will get increasingly more targeted web traffic than those that have not.  There may also be future implications for B&B directory listings as well, but that will depend on how well searchers adopt the new Chrome browser. We will be watching and blogging about this as the story unfolds.