Happy to be in the top 10 of Google search!
Have you ever searched for your own company’s main keyword and are quite happy to see your site appear in the top 5 or on first page?
Have you ever repeated the search on another computer and been surprised not to see it at all?
Have you consistently seen your site in the top 10 results but not seen the expected increase in visitors higher rankings can achieve?
Google’s Personalised Search could be the culprit!
Google for some time has been personalising search results based on a searchers search pattern and sites visited.
And, in general this may not be a bad thing helping to speed up the search process
Your Google Account
Until recently personalised search was active when signed in to your Google Account. You will have a Google account if you use Gmail, Adsense, Adwords or use Webmaster tools to help promote your online business.
It would appear, however, that the ‘service’ has been extended to all search actions whether logged in or not!
This, on the surface, may not appear to be too much of an imposition if it speeds up all our searches and returns the most relevant results.
So, what’s the problem?
The main problem is for site owners who are optimising their sites for higher search engine rankings to help build their online presence and increase sales or drive website visitors to their high-street store.
It would appear that one of the criteria for personalised search is the frequency of visits to particular sites and history-based customizations.
You might now be able to see part of the problem. As an example, if you have set your home page as your default browser page it will skew the search results and most likely return your home page higher up in the rankings than in reality they are.
The following video (by Andy Williams) gives the background and some ways to see the real results in the major search engines:-
To get the plugins mentioned in the video go to: http://yoast.com/tools/seo/disable-personalized-search-plugin/
