Does the browers type affect rankings?
-
This may be a rooky question so apologies in advance if it is!
A client of mine has asked why his site's rank is different when he searches for it from his iPhone or computer (where he uses IE) and also on Bing. Obviously I know that there will be differences between Bing and Google so I can explain that to him. But he seems to be implying that the different browsers are affecting the results on his iPhone and computer.
I've tried this myself using Firefox and IE and on Firefox the site ranks page 1 but on IE it ranks page 3 (both using Google). Is this likely to do with the browser having information about my past search habits or is it actually the browser affecting the SERP?
Again, sorry if this is a stupid question!
Thanks in advance.
-
Make sure instant search is off though. I think the URLs mess up if that's on.
I don't use instant much though, I hate it
-
Didn't know that, thanks
-
It disables personalised search.
-
Barry what does that query do?
-
Have you tried adding &pws=0 to the end of any search query. Does that make a difference?
Even though you're logged out, Google knows
-
Ok,
Have you tired clearing all cookies on both browsers and then checking?
-
Hi guys,thanks for the replies, both very helpful. Barry, that was my immediate thought as well but i've checked and I'm not logged into my Google profile on either browser, and activitysuper I've checked and I've got the same Google location on both. The only difference that I can see is that I'm look at Google in Firefox and getting page 1 and looking at Google in IE and getting page 3. Strange...
-
No. But i can share my experience that browsers play an important role in user experience, if you have designed your website were browsers cannot display or cache the page then your bounce rate will increase and visitors might not come back again to your website
I recommend The developers should also keep their eys open to all new browsers and upgrade to coding accordingly.
-
Uh that as well, good shout Barry.
When your logged in Google starts to customise your results depending on the searches performed.
-
It's much more likely that you're logged into a Google profile on one browser and not on the other, so your results are being personalised to a degree.
Could it be this or do I need to think about it more?
-
On each browser go to Google's homepage and at the bottom make sure both are set to the same Google location.
If one has .com set and the other has .co.uk set then your going to see a difference in ranking.
Was this the problem?
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
-
Duplicate website got indexed: Caused rank drop?
Hi all, We have replica of our website with exact pages and content. That website got indexed by mistake and allowed for bots for more than 10 days. Our ranking dropped now and we moved from 2nd page to 5th page. But previously we had this happened and didn't hurt much. We got punished now? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Recent Rank drop after Penguin 2.1?
Recently, a lot of pages from our website have moved from page one or ranking number one, to page ten or something. We got a manual penalty message from Google Team, we removed a lot of unnatural links pointing to our pages and disavowed the rest. This got the penalty removed and we got a message from Google confirming the same. Before the manual penalty we were getting about 140,000 visits per day, after the penalty about 80,000. However, after Hummingbird or Penguin 2.1 all our ranks have vanished. We are nowhere in Google for our primary keywords and we getting like 40,000 visits per day. Most are direct or from sources other than Google. We had another look at the links we disavowed, a list of about 11000 domains, we found about 3000 domains to be good. We fixed the disavow file about one week back, but no changes in traffic since. We checking the domains again to see if we have missed more good domains in there; yes, we have. There are still a very few good domains in there. But we are not touching the disavow list; waiting to see the change for the last submitted. We have a dedicated user base, good liking on Facebook, all the stats in Analytics speak good, about 40% repeat visits about 30% direct. About 3000 people search for the site using our brand name as reported in Analytics. I doubt the on-page optimization, the pages could be over-optimized. But the on-page factors for other pages ranking for the keywords are similar. The keyword density is similar, so are the usage of headings and stuff. We have not made any recent changes to these on-page patterns. Our team is not able to figure out what could have gone wrong.
Algorithm Updates | | Develop410 -
Why are Google Webmaster Tools' Google rankings different to actual Google rankings?
Dear Moz, We have noticed that according to Google Webmaster Tools one of our client sites is ranking very prominently for some of the major key phrases that we are trying to rank them for. However, when we perform a Google search for these queries, our client's content is nowhere to be seen, not even on the 5th page (we logged out of the Google account before performing the test). A long-term manual spam action on our client's site was recently lifted by Google - is it possible that Google Webmaster Tools is providing data about our client's estimated Google rankings, without taking into consideration the penalty of the manual spam action which was taken? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | BoomDialogue690 -
Anybody else noticing some serious dung ranking well for no reason lately?
I mean, like the complete opposite of what Panda is supposed to be doing... We've just had a discussion here and each went through a bunch of examples of sites that have sprung up and are ranking with the worst, spammiest backlink profiles ever, and poor content with little to zero on-page SEO. It's not accross the board by any means, and certainly there is no obvious pattern but there were a fair few examples we just looked at (I best not provide them for ethical reasons). It just "feels" like there's something going on...
Algorithm Updates | | SteveOllington0 -
Very Erratic Ranking
Over the last month our ranking for "Web Design in Cumbria" has fluctuated from position 2 to position 10 a couple of times a week on Google UK.It tends to go to position 10 on a Friday but bounces back to position 2 on the Saturday. Then it goes back to 10 on Monday / Tuesday then back to 2 the next day. Does anyone have any idea why, cause it is confusing the hell out of us? Thanks Fraser
Algorithm Updates | | fraserhannah0 -
Tuesday July 12th = We suddenly lost all our top Google rankings. Traffic cut in half. Ideas?
The attached screenshot shows all. Panda update hit us hard = we lost half our traffic. Three months later, Panda tweak gave us traffic back. Now, this past Tuesday we lost half our traffic again and ALL our top ranking Keywords/phrases on Google (all other search engines keywords holding rank fine). Did they tweak their algorithm again? What are we doing wrong?? eartheasy.com wtf.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | aran0880 -
What Happend To My Ranks? Began Dec 22 - detailed Info Inside
I have a .co.uk domain that was setup in November 2009 and it has always done pretty will in the SERPS. In Oct-Dec last year I could literally publish a post and be on the first page for a keyword with no backlinks at all. All of my posts/pages feature- 100% unique content (min 500 words)
Algorithm Updates | | mwoody
Imagery
Embeded video which is part of a video sitemap
External links
keyword density between 2 and 4
keyword in first paragraph bolded
Title tags are written like KEYWORD - Title, eg BLUE WIDGETS - What You Need To Know Then this happened- http://i53.tinypic.com/2a62fb8.jpg
On december 22nd - december 24th i see a sharp decline in traffic, and then a further decline december 31st - Jan 1st? On that graph I have marked out changes I have made to the site. The bottom bar that was deployed on Nov 30th was simply a floating price comparison bar stuck to the bottom of pages. Other than that change, nothing else had changed on the site during that period. Here's what I have done so far to try and fix things- Optimized load time (now 2.5 seconds)
Deployed MaxCDN content delivery network
Removed some pages which were similar, but 100% unique (unlock pages on graph)
Change H2 tags to H1 (previously there were no H1 tags)
Removed the bottom bar on nov 30th
reduced price compare results to 3 from 10
Ran a broken link check
Noindex/Follow 2nd pages of tag/categories pages
Improved blog posting rates to at least twice a day I have 100% indexation rate across the site, an average load time of 2.5 seconds. I've tried everything I can think of, and can't seem to pin point the issue and after 5 months of trying to get it fixed I think an outside view is needed! So what happened at Google mid-end december? Any advice/thoughts/feedback is greatly appreciated, thanks for your time. 2a62fb8.jpg0