Are we, as Carrie would say in the latest "Sex and the City" movie, "emotional cutters"  for continually trying to prove ourselves worthy of Google's consideration in organic search results, especially when it's become increasingly difficult to anticipate what criteria we're even being judged by?

Quite a few of us in the SEO community have been scratching our heads trying to figure out why the results of late in organic search have varied so wildly. How is it that a company can go from being one of the top three returned ads for a phrase one moment only to be relegated to page five the next? I mean, at least with Yahoo! and MSN, the results are fairly consistent. What gives?

Jaan Kanellis, along with the help and explanation provided by Google's very own, Marissa Mayer, may have at least part of the answer. It's called "Previous Query" and it's exactly what it sounds like. According to lore, Google's Previous Query factors in previous searches when deciding what ads to return on a current search inquiry. So, if I initially searched for "Batman" and subsequently searched for "movies", the second round of results would likely be ads for the Batman movies.

As Jaan points out, for those of us in the PPC world, this is nothing new, but if true, it would be new to organic search. Initially I imagine there will be some growing pains for searchers as Google tries to figure out your thought process and anticipate your wants, but I can see it being beneficial in the long run. The question is though, once Google has begun to create a search profile for me, will I then become pigeonholed, a product of my past searches?

For SEO marketers, this presents yet another unique challenge as Google continues their quest to remain elusive. The effects though will be marginal for those are who already implementing the core SEO principles.

Google and their algorithms may be a lot of things (I'll refrain from using expletives), but boring is certainly not one of them.

For more information on Google's Previous Query and the ever-growing frusterations of SEO marketers, be sure to read Jaan's post.

http://www.sitepronews.com/2008/04/25/google-previous-query-reason-for-crazy-google-rankings/