Many business website owners have been freaking out a little over seeing some pretty dramatic swings in their Google website search engine positioning. Many of these instances can be attributed to Googles most recent personalized search results update.
As art director for one of the leading website design companies in Oregon, I hear a lot of chatter about websites going from page 1 to page 5 overnight. This can happen to anyone. If you check your websites enough then you have probably experienced this phenomenon. Many people attribute it to lazy link building programs. Though, no one can know for certain how Google ranks websites, I have noticed similar temporary website fluctuations when Google releases a new algorithm update or when they do their quarterly page rank update. Google's most recent set of updates has to do with localized search results which is the culprit in many of the recent website ups and downs.
Consequently, I've been getting a lot of feedback from site owners who are freaking out about seeing dramatic changes in their websites search results. Yes it's true that actual search engine positioning and personalized SERPs can be significantly different. So, what's going on? First of all, there's no need to panic about this. There are several components at work here, but two important ones.
The first component is location. Google is continually trying to improve how they deliver the best and most relevant search results to those searching for companies, products, or services. In order to do this Google takes into account your location to bring you the most relevant search results. Google uses your IP address to deliver results based on the city in which you live or happen to be using the internet. This clearly affects user defined searches, but it also greatly impacts businesses with website SEO plans and search engine marketing campaigns. This new change can actually greatly improve local search campaigns for business websites, however it will skew how your business shows up in national search engine results. For instance, your website may be showing up on the first page of Google when you search for your key terms, but people outside of your area may be seeing your site somewhere on the fifth page.
The second component is Web History This affects both searches done when signed into a Google account and searches done while signed out though results will still vary a bit. Google customizes your search results based on previous search activity using a search information stored in a browser cookie. This information is referred to as "web history". Having your web history enabled can really give you a false sense of your websites ranking, because it pushes your most visited websites to the top. So, if you happen to search your own website to check rankings a lot - you may very well see yourself in the top position when actually you could be 50 pages deep in Googles actual search positioning.
How do I turn off localized search or what can I do to see my websites actual search engine position? If you don't want to see localized search results so that you can get a better idea of your websites actual SERP here's what you should do.
A) If you are signed into a Google Account you can disable "Web History" by choosing to "remove Web History" from you Google Account.
B) If you are doing searches signed out of a Google Account then you can delete the "cookie" stored on your browser by clearing your browsers cookies and refreshing your screen. You can also disable history based customization by going to the top right corner of a search result page and clicking on "Web History". Then on the resulting page click on "Disable Customizations".
Please note that if you are not logged into a Google account simply disabling web history will still provide distorted search results because Google will still be providing you with localized search results based on your IP address. However, your SERP's should now be fairly accurate while logged into a Google account. To see unbiased results you can check your website using a proxy server or a third party SERP checker website.
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