Google: Personalization In Search Is Extremely Light & Rare For Ranking

Aug 20, 2021 - 7:51 am 0 by

Google Light Weight Signal

Google's Danny Sullivan confirmed, again, that personalization in Google Search is an "extremely light" ranking signal. In fact, he said personalization is "fairly rare" to be used for ranking purposes.

Danny is confirming what he said back in 2018 when he said personalization in search is a very light signal. This is outside of geo/location personalization, which is used for tons of queries. But for previous searches, search history and what information Google has about your likes, dislikes and demographics is not really used to make the search results better for you.

Today, in 2021, Danny said "it's extremely light, actually fairly rare, when it comes to results themselves actually having a ranking change."

So it is unlikely you would see personalization do much of anything to impact the Google Search rankings.

Here are those tweets:

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: May 15, 2025

May 15, 2025 - 10:00 am
Google

Google Rethinking Search Stack From Ground Up With LLMs

May 15, 2025 - 7:51 am
Google Search Engine Optimization

Google Doc: Link Position & Click Bias Ranking Bias Adjustment

May 15, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Ads New "Ads Funded By" Details

May 15, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Device Targeting Controls For Performance Max Campaigns

May 15, 2025 - 7:21 am
Google

Google Search Tests Vertical Search Labels In Autocomplete

May 15, 2025 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Search Tests Suggested Channels Box