Skewed results in Google
-
Im just curious.. Im sure a lot of you, like me, Google your own search terms on a fairly frequent basis.
Does doing this skew the result you are actually seeing? As in, does Google tailor the results more to my liking, and therefore perhaps show my own site (which I would click through to often enough) higher on the page that it actually is?
Sometimes I swear that happens.
Steve.
-
Hi there
Yes, this is called Google Personalized Search - you can learn more about it from this great Whiteboard Friday.
If you want to get a more beneficial look at your rankings, I would suggest checking out Startpage or taking a look at your average position in Webmaster Tools - it's a more aggregated ranking metric in WMT as it combines multiple factors and averages your positions for that keyword/query. Also, Moz tracks keywords for you and updates you weekly.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
Yes totally. They are tailored by geographic location and by what they think your preference is. The best bet is using a different browserr with your ip address if you are trying for local. If you are trying to gauge nationally, you might try several browsers and vpn's to get a good handle.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are there better & inexpensive third party website analytics software over Google Analytics?
I've heard there are some third-party software that provide greater depth of information than Google Analytics, such as mouse tracking, heat mapping, video snapshots ect. Can anyone recommend a good program to use? I've tried a basic web-search but there seems to be a great variety of different ones.
Search Behavior | | Justin_hannan270 -
Google reconsideration nightmare
Hello and thanks in advance The website has had a penalty on it for a while now, around 10 months, it was worked on by an agency who bought bad links to it but before then it was worked on by other agencies that may have done the same. I cleaned up as many bad link (according to many posts read) and filled for reconsideration and was told to get rid of a whole bunch of links which i did not know existed. Downloaded WMT links as instructed by Google admin person and contacted a heap of people which took a lot of man hours and cost us a fortune. Resubmitted and again was shown a handful of links by the Google admin person and told to contact and remove. The funny thing is that a few of them I disavowed in my list so they should not have pointed these out. I emailed back and showed that everything I could do was done and am happy to disavow any other link which they though violated their terms. This was not enough and I was told to show more efforts in removing links and then resubmit for reconsideration. I have done as much as I can on the website, I cannot see any more links which show violation, if there are some I am happy to remove but am now at a stage where i need direction from others to tackle this matter. Any advice would be helpful; I cannot start over from scratch as it's a brand and not a small website.
Search Behavior | | Benbug0 -
I need Help with Google!!!!
I am trying to have my picture on the first page just like SEOmoz when someone search just the name, I know have something to do with google plus, but I am so new doing that no luck or probably I am doing wrong, I have been looking in the internet but I haven't found anything. Is there anyone who can write a tutorial and post here. Maybe is already done and I don't know where. Please see the picture attached so you understand better what I want to do Again I want appear just like this but with my company http://www.sombras.co.uk/images/pic.jpg pic.jpg
Search Behavior | | teksyte0 -
Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to our website
Hi, We have been using SEOmoz for a good few months now and have found it incredibly useful. Unfortunately however I think we may have slipped up a little bit as we have just received the following message in our Google Webmaster Tools: Google Webmaster Tools notice of detected unnatural links to http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/ I have a funny feeling I might know what the problem is but I'd like a confirmation before I potentially go off on a wild goose chase. We also own the domain name www.computerarticles.co.uk and recently started introducing the author at the bottom of the post along with both a link to the website homepage and a link to a deep, popular page on our website. For example, check out http://www.computerarticles.co.uk/twitter-time-saving-tools/ We genuinely didn't realise this was a bad thing and thought it would just provide Google with a way of deep linking straight in to popular areas of our site. I would really appreciate advice as to whether you think it might be these links that are causing the problem or whether there is something else that could be causing the problem. In the event it is these links that are causing the issue would you recommend removing the entire 'about the author' page (as we have published around 500 pages on that site) and simply put a link in the blog roll or simplify it to just link to the homepage. I appreciate in advance any help you could give. Regards Chris
Search Behavior | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Dating Blog Posts & How Fast Google Picks up on New Pages
I had until a few months ago included the original post date of a new blog post on the site. I then removed it and none of my results in Google now include the blog post date, although for some (for articles written about events) Google includes the date of the event where you would usually see the post date. Since I did this, it seems like new blog posts are taking longer to rank on Google, some results are ranking well, and others declined relative to what I would have previously expected. What's the best thing to be doing? To include a date (considering a lot of my content is not time-relevant) or to keep it as it is now? The second thing, is I often go through and update my articles with new information and re-post it in my rss feed etc - ie the date becomes new again. How does Google treat this? Any ideas or comments would be great! Thanks
Search Behavior | | ben10001 -
Google Query Contamination.... Are you seeing this??
I have been searching on Google.com with FireFox this morning. I searched for a state name.... like "georgia". Then I search for a product... like "guitars". For the Guitars query the first page of the SERPs include some music stores in georgia. So, Google is contaminating your search results with information from your most recent query. Are you seeing this too? Has Google been doing this for a long time? Or, I am going crazy?
Search Behavior | | EGOL3 -
Google Rel="Next" & Rel="Prev"
Hello, I have a catalogue website and I am implementing the rel="next" and rel="prev" to the website. My question is that we do have a view all page also, which apparently Google likes over a 'page1'.. Should I add the canonical to this page? I already have it set to WEBSITEURL/sonos (which is going well) I don’t want to have to change this to [URL]sonos/view-all (which is my view all link) as the first page is getting ranked well I am then telling Google no, the view all page is the parent. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks Rick
Search Behavior | | Lantec0 -
Website coming up in omitted results for search term?
Hi, My website is coming up in omitted results for search term. Now I have heard before if this is the case then its mainly due to a duplicate content penalty. But the content I used is unique and produced by a copywriter so its good. Its a new site and was in the results for about 2 weeks, I changed the non www to www in webmaster tools 1 day ago and now its sitting in omitted results. In webmaster tools I had to add the domain twice one non www and one www. Both accounts I hooked up a sitemap. Is it just because the site is new and its just working out where to rank me? Just so you know the non www was indexed for the 2 weeks changed it in webmaster tools so I wanted the www one indexed and now gone into omitted results. Cheers
Search Behavior | | activitysuper0