Question about Google search results?

[Fred Bloggs]

I've been putting a fair bit of effort into raising the profile of my website in Google lately (successfully so far). Imagine my delight when my previously half way down the 11th page website returned the website on the 1st page 2nd place last night on a search from my laptop.

This morning, I went to proudly show off my result to a colleague in the office and on my work PC, Google returned my website half way down the 2nd page for the exact same search terms. Now then, 2nd page is a big improvement on the previous page 11 result, but it now seems like the Google search result depends partly on which PC the search is done from?

How long has Google been (apparently) tailoring search results to individuals?

(Edit- My Laptop returns me in 2nd place on page 1 again, I just checked.)

[blacjac]

Is your office connection to the internet in a different country (quite common in large companies)?

Google will tailor the results to the location of the searcher.

[RichardCranium]

Is one using google.co.uk and the other google.com ?

Does one have safe-searching off and the other have it on?

Do you want to buy a link from www.chutneyspoon.co.uk to your site?

[Durbs]

How long has Google been (apparently) tailoring search results to individuals?

Yup, they use your search history and tailor the results to that in certain cases. In your case, you have been searching for your own site a lot to check its rankings and by doing so (and clicking those links) have told Google you value that particular link in your own search results above others so it adjusts your results.

If i search for your site, it'll return the rank as it sees it, not how it thinks i want to see it as it has no data on that search for me.

Delete your cookies and try again.

[Fred Bloggs]

Is your office connection to the internet in a different country (quite common in large companies)?

Google will tailor the results to the location of the searcher.

Aha! Denmark!

[Fred Bloggs]

Yup, they use your search history and tailor the results to that in certain cases. In your case, you have been searching for your own site a lot to check its rankings and by doing so (and clicking those links) have told Google you value that particular link in your own search results above others so it adjusts your results.

If i search for your site, it'll return the rank as it sees it, not how it thinks i want to see it as it has no data on that search for me.

Delete your cookies and try again.

Thanks, I'll do that. What is puzzling to me is that the website has been consistently on page 11 or 10 for ages. My efforts have no doubt helped its visibility though, but the change has been quite sudden from page 11 to page 2 very recently. I'm happy about that.

[Durbs]

Or search customisation is also applied if you are logged in under a Google account of some sort e.g. Gmail, analytics, adwords etc as the browser then knows who you are and what you've done in the past. Or if you have PageRank switched on in the Google toolbar then this also reports back on what you do.

You can switch this off by performing a search, viewing search settings and theres an option to disable customisation.

May be you were logged into Gmail on the first try and not on the second?

[xoggoth]

In the past, searching from different machines, I have had that impression too and thought I might have been doing something silly like using slightly different search terms.

However, I recently I asked a question on here and somebody referred me to a post I had made myself on a technical forum about 20 minutes earlier and it was number 1 page 1. If a new post on a technical forum can appear way at the top of Google within minutes, maybe the variations you mention are normal.

Read all the numerous SEO tips. Even continually fannying about with your website for no obvious reason has benefits apparently. Signing up to http://www.site-reference.com and http://www.addme.com will land you with lots of spam but unlike most spam their newsletters contains some pretty useful stuff.

PS Their latest one has an item on the Google personalisation that I think the other guys are referring to above:

http://internetmarketing.site-refere...s-it-possible/

[Fred Bloggs]

Good points those. Clearing the Google cookie on the laptop puts me on the 2nd page half way down, just like the PC at work. Now I can understand what's going on. I'm very happy to have gone consistently from page 10 or 11 to page 2 though. I'll keep my eyes on this. I think making regular, even minor, changes to my website has been productive in increasing it's Google rankings. My own website is now ranking really well amongst the major agency and jobs boards websites, I'm very pleased about that. All I need now is lots of calls about jobs. Hmmm............ that might be hard bit.

[oversteer]

AFAIK, there are a number of Google servers and they don't all update at the same time. Some may be testing newer versions of the search algorithm, or you may be on google.co.uk instead of google.com, etc. Also if you have signed in and 'pinned' any results to the top they will always appear at the top.