Google Ranking and the Changing SERPs
While doing an experiment with Google, I learned something that never occurred to me before. It may be true it has been discussed in the webmaster forums. Or, Google may have made an announcement. Or, maybe it was always this way and I just never noticed it. But, did you know Google’s results are not what they seem?
My experiment.
Let me give you a little background on what happened to lead to my discovery. Then, I will tell you what the implications are for webmasters, advertisers, and users of Google. search.
I have a few websites that are ranked in Google for a lot of different terms. They have done well for me and their links have moved a few of my sites up the Google listings. Before expanding into other websites, I decided to see if my links had as much power for other people as for me. Who knows? Maybe it might lead to reciprocal linking or some nice trades.
With several websites from volunteers, my test began. The terms were all over the place and the starting positions went from just outside the Top 10 into the hundreds. It was a diverse group to use for testing.
After about a week of monitoring, I realized that my links worked as well for my sites in Google as they did for the volunteers. One website was in China, another in India, and the rest in the United States. It didn’t seem to matter. Once the links went live, the rankings improved, within a week.
Now, you may be thinking, so… what was the discovery?
A little lesson learned.
Since the experiment worked so well, I decided to try it again. This was just to be on the safe side. Except, this time, I wanted a very specific site to try. This time it had to be in a money-making niche, with a highly keyword-targeted domain and in the first 100 results.
After getting another volunteer, a funny thing happened.
Having learned from the earlier experiment to make a clear distinction on the starting position of the site, it became obvious that…
Google displays results based on your location!
It took awhile to confirm this. It may be common knowledge. It may have been announced. It may be obvious. It may already be known to advertisers. But, it was news to me and to the volunteer.
What does this mean?
The biggest implication of this is that you have to re-examine your link building, search development, and site checking strategies. Just because you rank highly for a keyword when you do a simple search in Google, does not necessarily mean that rank is seen by the rest of the country, or the world.
In retrospect, it makes sense. I have seen one of my websites rank for an extremely competitive keyword phrase (10k+/day) and yet the traffic trickled in from Google. That alone should have told me something was not quite what it seemed. Yet, I ignored it. Lesson learned.
Strategy for success.
The best solution I have for handling this problem is to use proxy servers. Before, I thought they were only good for testing websites and avoiding viruses. Now, it seems, they are great for testing Google searches.
There are many proxy servers out there and new ones seem to become available every day. You have to be careful with them, because you can expect to be inundated with all kinds of intrusive ads. So, it may take some time to build a list of proxys to suit your tastes. However, they are invaluable for the purpose of checking Google search results.
My new strategy.
Now knowing how Google handles its results and with a list of proxy servers, I am ready to accurately understand how well my websites are doing in the SERPs. Since not everyone knows this, it is SEO experience that you can share with other webmasters. This is great if you are doing any kind of link trading or search engine optimization (SEO).
Another idea is to check to see if Yahoo and Bing do the same thing. Of course, it is not as worthwhile since they do not deliver the traffic of Google. Yet, it shows how search engines may not be as straightforward as you may have first thought.
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