People who claim to be allegedly SEO's irritate me quickly and can send me into a tirade they don't like to hear -- especially with their over-inflated pricing, along with blatant ignorance / stupidity as they greedily shove their hands into your pocketbook.
I'm not particularly fond of position checking as an SEO success metric because search engine rankings yield little useful information ... search engine software engineers have frowned on position-checking software usage for many years -- even though SEO clients often demand ranking reports as a part of an SEO package.
How will search personalization affect position-checking services?
Today, independent SEO professionals can check rankings on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc., and generally come up with the same reporting as most professional Webmasters can obtain. With personalization, consistent rankings will no longer be the norm. One searcher demographic may want to filter out content from one Web site, whereas another might prefer to keep it. Personalized SERPs will look considerably different for each type of searcher.
Sipping on a cold beer, I'm highly amused at the idea of algorithm chasers adapting to personalized search results. Cheers to algorithm chasers! Since I don't use position-checking software and I've never been an algorithm chaser, personalized search interfaces don't intimidate me ... I welcome the change.
My focus has always been on maintaining search-friendly Web site(s) and user-centered design (UCD) ... always prepared for personalized search interfaces. The Web pages I design and optimize will probably show up better in personalized search results because I design, code, program, and write for site visitors. If two Web pages contain similar useful content, the site that's easier to use tends to get more third-party link development.
Filtering Content
However, I do filter out content from specific Web sites ... I'm not interested in clicking on links to sites that require a subscription to view their content -- my time is extremely valuable, and I don't have the fortitude for such childish antics.
If I'm using Google or Yahoo to find information on a specific topic, it's extremely irritating to view information in a Google and Yahoo SERP, then be delivered to some stupid, asinine subscription form.
If you're expecting to see the keywords and snippet on the destination page, do you want to view a snippet, click a link, and get a form? ... I don't.
Back to the cold beer and pounding the keys.......
