This is a quick video in response to a comment Alan Miles made over on Nanette Levin’s blog.
Nanette posted about how SEO makes for crappy copy, which lead Alan’s train of thought to do Google serve the same search results to different people?
Is Google favoring its own? I’ve been a little suspicious of their rankings since, a couple of years ago, they had a major change to the search algorithm, and I suddenly found that my own posts seemed to gain more prominence. I wondered then: does Google promote content you’ve written yourself when you search on your own computer. It would be a sneaky trick. It might be worth comparing notes on this. When we both search for a term, do I get the same results as you?
What’s your experience of personalised search?
Ranking in Google? Are You Sure? by Jan Kearney
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Well, that raises a whole lot more questions. I can see why it’s useful to find again content that you’ve visited, bookmarked, indexed. But why on earth would there not also be an option to see an uncoloured listing? It’s like saying, in a business, let’s only focus on the customers we know, not the ones we don’t know. Taken to its logical extreme, this approach would leave us tied up in a little ball of self-interest. It’s a bit too 1984 for my liking. Thanks Jan.
You can turn off Search Plus Your World, but it is on as standard. It can be toggled on and off in the top corner by clicking the world – this is session based and will revert back to “on” once the browser is closed. Logged in, you can change your search settings and they will remain until you change them again.
For personalisation based on web history (like ours in the UK, which happens whether you are logged in or not), you can opt out – http://www.google.com/history/optout. Note that if you do opt out and then clear your cookies, you need to opt out again.
Location cannot be turned off only changed.
I’m with you Alan. The whole joy of the net, what makes it so fascinating and amazing is new discovery. If I want to know what my contacts look at or search for, I’ll ask them!
Unfortunately, the Big G provides 90% of the search volume here in the UK. I know from people whom I talk to that they don’t realise their searches are personalised – and why would they? And when SPYW arrives – how many will bother to turn it off or even know that they can?
Very good post.
Thanks so much for taking the time to to address this question, Jan. If you don’t have an account to log in through with no search history (or Google ID tied to it), is there a way to see what the generic results are for a search term (I’m thinking a URL or other online destination that can help you see results without a built-in bias)?
Hi Nanette, I think the easiest way is with a Firefox addon from SEOBook called Rank Checker – there’s my next post, I’ll catch up with UBC yet! http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/