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Google Personalization Sucks – How To Get Real Results?

By Nickfb76 | April 1, 2010

I think Google loves to make SEO’s squeal.  Google personalized search just drives most search engine specialists insane!  For people that aren’t familiar with “personalized search” it is a specific way Google displays your search results.   If you frequently search for shoes and click on the Nike.com website Google personalized search will remember that.  The next time you search for the term “shoes” Google may opt to place Nike.com at a higher search position just for you!  Google personalized search makes it difficult for two unique users to receive the same results.  Supposedly there are a couple ways to avoid personalized results; however I haven’t found a concrete answer to this issue.

The Painstaking Test – A “Normal Search”.

Being that I work for a web design firm located in Minnesota, “Minnesota Web Design” is a logical keyword term that we have been targeting.  I will use this keyword as my example.  Let’s start the test out by doing a simply Google search for the targeted keyword.

OMG!!! I AM NUMBER ONE, I AM THE BEST SEO EVER…. Wait what’s this personalized search crap you’re talking about… oh. :-(

Google Personalization Sucks How To Get Real Results?

Using pws=0 In The Query String.

The “solution” to Google’s personalized search is suppose to be the additional query string “pws=0” within the URL.  Well I definitely get a different result.  The site is now listed as number nine in my search results.

Using a Web Proxy Server.

I’m not 100% sure using a proxy server is the solution to Google’s personalized search either.  Using the web proxy http://www.hidemyass.com I checked our ranking and we sit at number nine.   Looks like we have found two sources stating our “real” search ranking is at position nine.  Hey this is the second way to verify my number nine position, this is looking good!  Let’s check our position with one more tool

Google Webmaster Tools

Ok, here is the real solution… we register our website for Google Webmaster Tools! They always give you a snap shot for your rankings!  So I log in and look at my “top search queries” and it states…

Google Personalization Sucks How To Get Real Results?

Position eight!? What!?  I just had two tools that supposedly overrides Google personalization and shows my position at nine?

This Isn’t Funny Google!

We have performed four Google searches for the same query and received three different results.  How can webmasters keep track of site rankings?  Is this a big joke to Google?  Do you really not want us to know where we are at in the search results?  Granted we all should be focusing on the traffic and conversions our site gets, however seeing our site in the results is an added bonus for our hard work.

Keeping track of rankings within Google is a pain in the butt.  What other methods do you guys use to check your rankings?  Does Google Personalized search piss you off too? Feel free to share your comments below!

Topics: Myths and Crap | 22 Comments »

Posted on 01 April 2010 by Nick LeRoy

Nick is a Minneapolis SEO Consultant at FindLaw a Thomson Reuters business.

has written 4 articles for SEO Bullshit

  • http://twitter.com/JoshShear Josh

    I tell people within the company to log out of Google if they want to see where we are in search. For tracking results, I use SEOBook's RankChecker and SEMRush's tools (we're on a $19.99 a month plan for the latter, but you can get limited results for free to see how it works).

    These tools aren't always accurate (in fact, they sometimes conflict), but if we use them as a standard, we know we're succeeding if we move up, even if we can't pinpoint a stat for moving up.

    The other thing we do is run a site: search once a month to check out how many of our pages are getting indexed across Google, Yahoo and Bing. When we see large increases there, we're happy.

  • Nick LeRoy

    Thanks for the incite Josh. I too have had experience with external tools, webpostion4 being a good one in my experience. However for this article I just wanted to stick with “free” tools that would be available to everyone.

    I agree 100% that you need to stick with one utility and base the growth off of that. Outside of the standard search these options do tell you where about your site is ranking. My biggest gripe is between positions 8-12 kinda a big difference in SEO :)

  • ChrisPantages

    I've used Google Global with some success – the neatest feature of that app being you can enter any location/zip and get “local” results. I still can't get the geolocal searches to show a map (pizza, restaurants, etc) without a city name modifier tho. We also use Moz and Webposition – but Webposition definitely uses your general area to get your rankings. Moz probably uses the Seattle area.

  • http://mainboardgames.com/ Johan

    Did you checked the country when performing the search through pws=0 and the proxy? After all, country is just another variable for the google indexing query

  • sabsa

    I find the navelgazing on rankings to be debilitating.

    Sure, you rank number 1, 2 and 3 respectively for “absurdly long tail term / low search volume” and it's cousins, but who honestly gives a shit?

    If you want to see where you rank, check out the terms people actually click on when you look in your analytics. I find the volume and variance of keywords to be a better indicator of SEO health than any ranking number can ever display.

    Ranking to SEO is what “hits” are to Analytics. Yeah I went there.

  • Nick LeRoy

    Yes, all searches were performed as USA selected for country. The pws=0 query was used through “Google.com Unpersonalized” which off the top of my head I can't remember the company who offers it. However, I have the US version.

  • http://www.redflymarketing.com/blog/ Dave Davis

    Hey Chris,
    We're actually working on this as we speak. Next version will fix this issue and add a few more depersonalization features (adtest seems to work wonders for some reason!).

  • edgar

    Recently we are using rank tracker for the monitoring of keywords. There is a free version but the paid is more accurate than the free.

  • http://seo.tolafamakinwa.net/ Tola F.

    I use SEOBook's Rank checker and SEOMoz's Rank tracker as well. Works quite well for me. Something I also do is to have a particular browser which I always delete the cookies and history on before I start any search. It usually comes up with the same search on the other rank checkers. My last resort is Google webmaster but it works so what the heck!
    But yeah, personalized search is pretty annoying!

  • http://billygirlardo.com Billy Girlardo

    Seems to work in FB that way to: as soon as I type “We” into their search box, am I to believe my little web company is #1 around the FB world – with no paid advertising being used? I doubt it!

  • http://dynamical.biz/blog/ Ani Lopez

    Google also 'personalize' the SERPs in their favor: Google.es is ranking itself position 9th, was 10th 2 days ago, for 'diseño web en españa' (web design in Spain) http://ow.ly/1yAD9
    When Google became a web design company in my country?

  • http://www.propdata.net Robert

    “hits” hahahaha… you're officially my hero today!

    That said, valid point. As far as I can tell, I can't recall a time when personalisation wasn't part of the results even if it was just at a country/IP level. Sure rankings are nice, but with so many unique searches being performed each day, surely you're looking for results, not a ranking.

  • http://www.borisbenz.com Boris Benz Marketing

    Yep,
    This “personal” stuff sucks. I subscribe to keyword ranking reporting tool seopilot to track my clients rankings and I began to hate it. Most of their reports have become highly inaccurate. I am not sure about google master tools, I gave up on them, they never matched random SERPs I got from different locations.

    I also do not like the idea, that Google “knows better” what I want than I look at. The whole idea of this personalized search is stupid because person's interests and habits may change. As far as I am concern it is a profiling tool.

    I also recall reading an article where Google has announced that they are not treating web design firms and SEO firms as local business since we can get clients everywhere. This is again a stupid assumption on their part, I prefer working with locals. Actually, I don't track rankings religiously anymore. My clients want to see conversions.

  • http://www.kaydinsdale.co.uk/ Kay Dinsdale

    I don't like it because it gives my clients a false impression of where they rank. I had to go see one the other week because they were seeing #1s across the board. It's not nice having to demonstrate to a gleeful client what happens when they log out of web history. They rank ok, just not all #1's. Yet ;)

    We already have to suffer idiots that get clients to install special toolbars that give false ranks. I'll bet they're having a field day at how personalised search can be abused to con yet more people.

  • http://www.abigdoor.com/blog Victor

    I'm using SEOMoz and AWR for more than 500 keywords in 15 countries, and it sucks, every day I have tons of differences between tools, and between tools and manual search! : (

  • http://www.mallorcaclassified.com/ Pavlos Skoufis

    Google said that their tool was supposed to be a way to check rankings without having to type in each query (and overload their search engine).. And it gives approximate data not exact.. Great job…

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  • Anonymous

    Thanks for the article. I did a quick search this morning and found it. Looking on how to turn off personalized searches.