Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim graciously answered a few questions I asked him after I used marketingpilgrim.com in round 5 of Guess the Marketing Site game. In this q & a Andy shares his views on personalized search and more about his popular internet marketing news site.

Q: Personalized search for the average Google user: for or against and why?

Andy: I think that personalization is a great evolution for search. With Google’s launch of Universal Search, we’re seeing search engine results that are far more relevant to the entered search query. The tough part for Google is to refine its technology to truly understand the intent of the search and at the same time not overdo it with personalization. Personalization can do more harm than good, if Google makes too many assumptions about what a user is interest in. Just because I may have previously researched car reviews for “Jaguar”, doesn’t mean that I’m not also interested in the Jacksonville Jaguars or the jungle cat!

Q: You are 8 episodes into your Marketing Pilgrim Podcast, how do you feel about it at this point? Did you consider doing a show on Webmaster Radio?

Andy: It’s tough to say what my plans are for the podcast. Podcasting is something that I’ve experimented with in the past, but never uncovered its true value. This time around, I’m finding it more useful and I’ve had some good feedback from those that have subscribed. I certainly don’t expect it to rival the readership of MarketingPilgrim.com – we have 8,000 visitors a day – but it could grow in time to be a good compliment to the blog. One main benefit is that it allows me to share more of my thoughts on marketing news – which would take far too long to type up. The down side is that I have to put the show together myself, so a 30 minute podcast takes another 45 minutes to edit and upload.

I’ve certainly considered a Webmaster Radio show and have had some early discussions with them. I like the idea of allowing listeners to call in live and ask their questions. The downside is that I would need to find time in my schedule for a regular show – which will be a challenge with all that I have going on right now.

Q: Running a news site has to be time intensive, how do you balance your time between Marketing Pilgrim and consulting?

Andy: That’s a good question and one I get asked a lot. I used to spend just an hour or so each day blogging, but now that the blog is growing fast – and we have advertisers – I actually spend half of my week working on the blog. I tend to blog between 9am and noon each day, with updates in the afternoon, if needed. I’m lucky to have a great team of contributors and fantastic assistant editor, Jordan McCollum, and they helped keep Marketing Pilgrim updated throughout the day. Consulting is a lot of fun, but I currently only dedicate 25-30 hours a month to consulting work. This allows me to work with some great clients (for example, I’m doing some cool work with SAS) and give them my best attention – something I couldn’t do if I overloaded myself with consulting work. One thing that has helped me a lot is to stick to a set schedule of consulting each week. Typically I consult on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, with the occasional onsite visit here and there.

Q: I noticed you did your most recent podcast on blogtv. I’m just watching it now. How did you like it and do you think you will do more of your casts with it?

Andy: BlogTv has been an interesting experiment for me. It’s allowed me to test live video streaming as a channel and gives me a little more interaction than a podcast. It’s certainly a lot easier to host a web cast, than put together a podcast – less editing – but in order for it to grow, you really need to host the show at the same time each week. Some blogging friends are encouraging me to test UStream.com as an alternative, so look for that in the coming weeks.

Thanks Andy!