Searching Google with personalised search results disabled.
Did you now that google returns personalised search engine results? This basically means that if you type 'Web Design Northern Ireland', you'll see different results than me because google knows I type this often and click the same link (Noostyle) often. Google then helps me by ranking my 'favourite' sites higher in the search engines as a measure of convenience.
Personalised Search and SEO
This is well and good unless you are a website owner, wanting to monitor your SEO progress. Google personalised results may give you false results in terms of what the rest of the world sees.
There are a number of ways to 'turn off' personalized search in order to get accurate search results (ie not influenced by your previous google searches).
This is really beneficial when you want to check the real rankings for your website which is often promoted in search results by personalised search algorithm, because of your repeat clicks on your own URL.
Here are two easy ways to disable personalised search results:
- You can add "&pws=0" to your Google search URL
- Use Google's Chrome browser, open an incognito window (Ctrl + Shift + N)
You can also turn it off permanently.
Hopefully this unformation will help a few of you who are interested in your SEO efforts.
Good luck
Peter
