Search gets personal!
In a couple of conversations with clients recently, the issue of personalised search has cropped up.
One client liked to check how well their web site was performing in search engines simply by running a Google search from their own computer. The other client liked to check how well their competitors were doing in Google in the same way.
But neither client had allowed for the fact that Google now personalises the search results it presents to you. So if you have performed similar searches previously and clicked on some of the results, Google will tend to present these "clicked-on" results higher up next time you search. So what you see when you do a search can be very different from what someone else (such as a potential new customer) might see.
...and SEO gets even more confusing!
The rationale behind this is understandable. Google feels it allows them to give more emphasis to the search results you've found helpful in the past. But, personalising search results in this way can make the whole issue of search engine optimisation (SEO) even more confusing. Google's personalised search misled both of my clients. The first client tended to think their own web site was performing better in Google than it really was - just because they'd clicked on the link to their own site when doing previous searches. And the second client was making a similar mistake - but this time assuming that a particular competitor was performing better in Google than they really were!
How can I see "real" search results?
You have a couple of options if you would like to see unpersonalised search results:
- Google offers this advice on how to opt out of personalised search: see http://www.google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54048
- you can install an "unpersonalised" search plugin in your web browser
SEO reports
Another option is to ask me to to run an SEO report, showing how your web site performs for various search phrases. The report uses unpersonalised search for Google and can be extremely helpful in planning your SEO activity.