One of our clients has a ranking anomaly happening...
-
Good afternoon, Mozzers!
My boss and I noticed a weird thing happening in the rankings for one of our clients. Just in case the niche has anything to do with it, the client is an HVAC company.
When my boss is in an incognito window and he googles "commercial HVAC Portland" - The client showed up at #8.
BUT ---- When I googled the same keyword-string in an incognito window, the client showed up at #14.
We are both on the same IP. And we did these searches within minutes of one another.
Does anyone know why / how this might be happening? We'd love to hear your thoughts!
-
The Joe Stoffel answer is perfect, and also you can check at the bottom of the web results of google we google thinks is your position or city, it can change becouse google checks in different server your results. Maybe google changes your position in an incognito or stop from showing the city
-
I do not think this is a ranking anomaly, I just think the results are being personalized despite the common belief associated with Incognito mode. Check out the link below which will take you to the Google Chrome Forum post 'Does Incognito Mode Remove Personalized Search Results'. The top answer provides a great explanation as to why these results are not always as unpersonalized as one might think.
https://support.google.com/chrome/forum/AAAAP1KN0B0Zaq9rFwdLWg/?hl=en
"When using Incognito Mode, you’re most definitely not anonymous; you are exactly as identifiable, trackable, followable, and recordable as a Normal Chrome window. All browser info, system, plugins, IP connection, location details, etc. are provided exactly the same in Incognito, and the websites and webservices you go to are provided all the same info as a Normal window. Incognito effectively provides a very quick way to start an empty session; but if you keep using Incognito without ever closing the last Incognito window, you are just as identifiable and trackable as using a Normal window, and you gain nothing by using Incognito. (If you want true web anonymity, you need to use proxy servers or proxy services.)"
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
-
Canonical - unexpected page ranking
We are getting good ranking for an unexpected page, rathewr than the one we were trying to get ranking for. Should we put a canonical on the 'unexpected page' to the page we would like to receive the ranking for - or do we risk losing the ranking? Any suggestions welcomed. Ian
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Substance-create0 -
Lost homepage rankings for one day
We had a strange thing happen to our website. We have a website that ranks for top keywords for some years. Last week we lost alle of our rankings for one day. The strange thing was, that the rankings were only lost on the homepage, the homepage didnt rank anymore. Even when i googled for 'homepage.com' google showed 'homepage.com/page' and not the homepage. After some reading i checked for the following: no-index sources in the source code - but no results checked for http respons code - 200 ok status checked for downtime in pingdom - no downtime With no rankings on the homepage i was losing 90% of the traffic, i went to GWT and did a fetch as google request, the website looked okay. After that i request a new indexation request. After this the website was back in google with all the old rankings. But what has happend, is still a question for me. Can this be an hack or a wordpress problem or is this realtime penguin with a hit. I also read things about Google flux, but it didnt happen before and it was just the homepage, with no index at all. What happend?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | remkoallertz0 -
Why does some sites rank with no seo
Why is it that some site rank with zero efforts? I have been working on some seo for a while on my main site and i have been getting more info competition analysis with sem and moz. Looking at the states from this website which tends to popup often in the searches on page 1-2 before my site. This site is not keyword optimized, meaning they arent even trying to rank.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CooperStrzelecki
There is no content, articles etc.,
6 backlinks (nothing powerful just 2 directory links and 2 from developer)
Site really isnt even designed to get traffic as its a trade only ecommerce website
I doubt they are hiding anything as far as backlinks etc. as it will get them too many visitors they dont want
The city i am searching isnt even on the page (it is a city within a city so maybe google still relates it)
PA 24 DA 15 Now my site:
Optimized reasearched keywords
175 backlinks
All my main pages have content with images, alt tags, internal linking
full of content, blogs, videos, products (probably 4000, could a site being too big be an issue?)
Site gets regular updates
I probably have 200 citations
All the social media which gets done often
PA 32 DA 20 They do get a good bit of traffic but that is probably the only thing i would see but it would be direct traffic mostly i believe as it would be people going to order regularly since it is a print reseller. They may have some age on me 15 vs 8 years. Could it be some kind of penalty i am not sure about lingering? According to what i know to check everyything looks ok, no shady links accoding to sem. I am working more and more on all the pages but this competittion site really doesnt have crap going on probably 8 pages and 1 page does all the ordering. What the hell does google want from me exactly!0 -
Highly Related, But Not Ranking
Hi Everyone! I'm doing a bit of research on a domain and I've come across something really odd. Doing a search for "asset based lending software" (not with the quotes), www.case.net doesn't show up anywhere in the first 100 results. However, at the bottom of the results in the "Searches related to asset based lending software" section, it lists "computer software enterprises inc" as the 2nd item (the company associated with www.case.net). Any ideas here? NdsoeNn.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | QueTech0 -
Ranking Above sub-domains
So I work for a company that has a very successful affiliate that operates under a third level domain name such as "region.company.com". Their SEO practices are very good and they rank highly in keyword searches. However "company.com" does not even though it is not a subdomain. Even after optimizing the company.com's pages etc, the regional sub domain ranks much higher for keywords and the main company fails to rank at all. Is Google discounting the main company's page? Is it a matter of trust or time? or is it something else? How can I get Google to prioritize the main company website rather than a lower level domain affiliate?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Resolute0 -
Client Question
Client Question - How much time this keyword takes to rank? Is there any tool or any calculation to find out the estimate time for a particular keyword?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marknorman1 -
Online Pharmacy Client
So... Have a client with a physical pharmacy in the UK, they are looking to branch out and start selling online... Primarily high value 'embarrassing medicines' etc... The have an existing companynamepharmacy.co.uk domain that has acted as a brochure site for the past 4 years (thats the domain age) still with low domain authority etc but they've also purchased a keyword match domain citynameonlinepharmacy.co.uk which they thought would be better to use... They are fully prepared for a reasonable wait on the organic listings and will head up the project with PPC and Google shopping integration which is known to be successful for other similar online pharmacies... Anyone tackled building an online pharmacy site from the ground up with any advice, specifically on the domain front, there is a trade off between the newly registered keyword match domain and the 4 year old company name match - Its clear with a pharma industry site we need to build trust so need to tick every box on that front...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | digitalarts0 -
Why does this 1-page doorway rank #2?
Search on "santa cruz custom cabinets." In my SERPs, I'm seeing exact match santacruzcustomcabinets.com rank #2. This is a 1-page site provided by Yellow Book as part of an ad it sold to this cabinet shop. The site has no other pages, no inbound links, etc. So much for Google saying it's going to turn down the meter on exact match domains because that's all I see this website, if you want to call it that, has going for it. what do you see? Why is it ranked so high? Why is it above the site below it for example? And why doesn't Google lower the boom on Yellow Book for these doorway pages? Thought you'd all find this interesting. Any comments?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KatMouse0