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Google will begin offering personalized search results as well as giving particular importance to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

This was the announcement made by Ismael El-Qudsi, currently of Havas Digital, formally of Microsoft, who is taking part alongside 300 similar technical experts in the Search Congress Bilbao, a conference on search engines and on-line marketing be held this 28th and 29th January at the Palacio Euskalduna in the Biscay capital.

According to El-Qudsi, "if Google detects that you like photos then the first results it will offer you will be photos; if I like videos, the results will be of videos,... coming this year in Google are personalized searches". Another new feature this year in the popular search engine, used by more than 90% of the market, will be the relevance given to social networking sites.

"Quality content" and reputation

In these terms, practically all the experts attending the conference were in agreement. Twitter already offers the option via Google to perform "live searches" of things people have said or commented in their tweets. But this is not the only reason to be well-positioned in Google.

According to Albert López of Softonic, "the two most important factors are content and flexibility. Content is number one," Quality, he says, is then decisive: what the content is about and how it is told, using internet language. "And flexibility," he adds, "you need to be up to the minute and in this domain things move very quickly".

Another topic brought up in the conference was that of on-line reputations. Marcos Maceira, of Newbriefing, explained that "everybody understands about reputation; but the point at which a company starts to worry is when they make an internet search and see that their name does not come off well. In the case of people, it''s the same or worse: You need to be aware, especially young people. If Google picks up on something, it stays there for good."