Turn cookies off for most accurate SERPs

I recently became concerned that my website was losing ground to some pretty poorly optimized competitors, seemingly out of the blue. After some panic, I realized that this was because the search results I was being served were majorly skewed by my search history and browsing history. When I turned off cookies and went through a proxy, my site was in the same position it had been all along for most of the keywords.

It's easy to forget that Google shows a different set of results to each user, based on the usage profile stored for that user. I feel you can get a more objective sense of where you stand in the SERPs by turning off cookies and going through a proxy (you should use a proxy within your home or target country).

I believe I was being served wildly different results because I had spent so much time trolling through the pages of my keywords' SERPs and clicking on my competitors, even if they were buried deep in the results. This told Google that I found pages relevant for different reasons than it normally would've expected. In my case, I believe I trained Google to believe that I preferred results in the form of blog posts, as 3 of the top 10 positions changed to blog posts, even though an anonymous search returned results with no blog posts in the top 10. That's my theory.

Anyways, just remember: don't freak out if you start to drop in the SERPs if you're checking using your home computer!

Everything you stated is good advise.

I actually do a search on my sites (keyword ranking) two ways. I use a proxy and computer location to match the proxy for the west coast. Then I do the same thing on the east coast, I am talking US for you outside of the US.

That gives me two different looks at what Google serves up. Depending on my site the search results are the same to about 3 spots off.

Weird but I found this a few years ago when I partnered with someone and we both Googled the same thing from two different areas and had different results.

Just use http://scroogle.org, it takes care of everything for you.

clade said:

Just use scroogle.org, it takes care of everything for you.

Click to expand...

Thanks!!

For checking rankings why don't you use market samurai or rank checker?
Rank checker is available here and mudbutt has a method to get lifetime MS.

And for cookies just use CCleaner

These kind of tools make it more efficient for you that way you can get things done.

Tool : Rank Checker of SEO Power Suit
For every1 can see : Mozila Fire Fox's Private Browse ( total free )

for rank checking I recommend SERPAttacks

Once you hit the google +1 button to your page in the search results again you will get the different results than actual

bigeazy said:

For checking rankings why don't you use market samurai or rank checker?
Rank checker is available here and mudbutt has a method to get lifetime MS.

And for cookies just use CCleaner

These kind of tools make it more efficient for you that way you can get things done.

Click to expand...

I use MS and have found the results to be different than a Google search with cookies cleared. The Google search shows the results lower (higher number) than MS. So Google shows more what others see.

I use Traffic Travis and find it pretty good for checking SERPS

Fallenintome said:

I use Traffic Travis and find it pretty good for checking SERPS

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I have TT4 and it does a pretty good job. I actually like it better for some things than MS.

SEORocks said:

I use MS and have found the results to be different than a Google search with cookies cleared. The Google search shows the results lower (higher number) than MS. So Google shows more what others see.

Click to expand...

Are you using CCleaner to clear your cookies? Remember if you use Firefox or default browser and clear cookies there, that doesn't mean your cookies in other browsers such as safari or internet explorer are cleared.

And also google is notorious for dropping "flash cookies" thats why you have to use a third party app to fully clear all cookies

clade said:

Just use scroogle.org, it takes care of everything for you.

Click to expand...

Scroogle only returns results from the .com version of Google, so it's useless to anyone who doesn't target the United Statians market.

Get FireFox Better Privacy plugin and set it to clear everything on browser shutdown including LSOs. Then you never have to wonder if you're seeing skewed results. Also it protects your butt on sites that drop LSOs and cookies to track you.