Google’s Personalized Search is a very cool feature, but when working with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), can give a skewed view in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Attempting to personalize the results to your query, Google’s Personalized Search happens usually by default, so…
Log Out!
If you’re logged into Gmail or any other Google-based service while entering in a search query into the box, the results will be personalized, based on you’re click history, as well as other factors.
This means that if you’ve done some SEO work on your site, go into Google to check your ranking, and are signed in, you get personalized results. And when you continue to click through to your own pages – well this tells Google that you really like this site and are “voting” for it; thus personalized/altered results may happen in the future.
But for SEO, we want to see the actual results – not the personalized ones.
There are two ways to avoid seeing Google’s Personalized Search results:
- Log out of your Google services
- Add
&pws=0to the end of your search string in the search box or address bar
Now get out there and optimize your searching skills, you saucy SEO searcher!