Personalized search introduced by Google will affect your rankings
On December 04, 2009 Google announced that they will customize your search results based on your past search activity even if you are not signed in your Google account. What it means is, the search results you see on your computer may differ slightly from what your neighbor sees on his laptop. Google is now keeping track of your search history of last 180 days on your browser’s cookies and produce the search results based on your search behavior. You can learn more about this feature on Google’s official blog here.
This is an important piece of information for all members of KPMRS who are using our service to monitor their website rankings on Google because you may see a difference in the rankings shown on kpmrs.com from what you may see on your personal computer. Many members have already contacted us about this issue asking us the reason why we are showing wrong results. This post should make it clear that, our results are not wrong but they are just different because we do not take into effect your personal search history.
In order to see the global search results, you can simply turn off this feature from “Web History” which is shown on top right corner of Google.com. This will tell Google that you do not wish to customize the search results based on search activities performed on that computer. (See screenshot below)
What you search from your computer will not affect how you see results on Google
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According to the Web History explanation, you have to install the Google toolbar in order to receive personalized search results. But I believe my search results are personalized anyway. Do you have anymore info on this? Tks
I don’t think installing the google toolbar is necessary.. They have clearly mentioned that they will be using browser’s cookies to save your search history.
It is not necessary to install the toolbar…
Nope, installing the toolbar is unnecessary. It’s now personalised search by default, meaning you need to opt out. Previously you had to opt in.
Perhaps worth mentioning also that a number of people in my office have reported finding themselves opted back in again. Seems like the stickiness of the opt out is a little flaky?
Brilliant blog post about search engine optimization. I’m frankly surprised that it has not been said before.
I know this because contantly monitering my sites and i have learned it from google itself, google is using this practise from last 2 years. But it is really thanks to you for telling the way out of it.
Cool & fresh looking web site, I’ll add it to my bookmarks
!