Google and Personalization

Google’s making a big push for personalization. They invited journalists to the first-ever Google Personalization Day to unveil some new stuff they’re up to with personalization. For one, Google is allowing users to set a default geographical location, which will allow them to get targeted search results; searchers who type in “spa” would get listings for spas in their town, for example. And then Google is doing some “behind the scenes” personalization with its Web History, allowing users to get more relevant results based on their past browsing and search history.

We think it’s great that Google is making forays into personalization. After all, the future of the Web is about creating a personal experience for each user – not a one-size-fits-all Internet. In fact, here at CleverSet, personalization is our mantra. We believe that until the Web is totally personalized, it’s falling short of consumers’ needs. Our idea of personalization is complementary to Google’s emerging offerings, because we personalize on a real-time, one-on-one level every time a visitor comes to a website. We analyze the relationships between a user’s current behavior, clickstream data, stored customer information, product catalog details and purchase history to actually predict what a customer will want to buy next.

So when someone visits a website to shop for chardonnay, they get recommendations for chardonnay. When they come back an hour later to look for a corkscrew, they get recommendations for corkscrews. Our technology doesn’t “store” your browsing behavior, but instead looks at your immediate, real-time activity on a site to offer totally relevant, up-to-the-minute recommendations. We think it’s great that Google is attempting to deliver on the personalization promise of a “the Internet just for me” – because that’s CleverSet’s goal, too.