A friend of mine asked to check his rankings this morning, because he was surprised to see a huge improvement in the ranking of his website since last time he checked just 2 weeks ago (and he hadn’t changed his website since).
His website is www.Door.net.nz and his rankings were:
- door knob – 1 & 2
- door knobs – 2
- door handles – 2
- door handle – 2
- door lock – 3
But using free software called RankChecker, I was able to get his his ranking for these keywords without Google distorting the rankings with personalisation.
His true rankings are:
- door knob – 13
- door knobs – 15
- door handles – 39
- door handle – 36
- door lock – 41
This is the most dramatic example of “Google Search Personalisation” that I have seen.
How did this happen? Why are the results so different?
Did you know that if you have a Google account and you are logged in when you are doing Google searches, then your search results are personalised to you?
Google has been doing this for years, but recently even people without Google accounts who are not logged in are having their search results personalised to them.
Why is Google doing this?
Because Google wants to show you results that you like, so they are collecting data every time you do a search and monitoring what results you click on. So next time you do a similar search, they will show those results higher in the rankings.
Thats exactly what happened to my friend.
This means, that it is even more important to use a third party rank checking tool such as RankTracker or CuteRank to check the search engine rankings of your website.
