How Your Search Engine Rankings Are Being Effected

There are three primary things that may determine the results sets you see for any search you make. For example, if you are in Google and are searching for “remodeling contractor in michigan” what you see may vary based on three reasons . They include the search engine data center you hit, the location of your computer and if you have personalization preference turned on.

Data Centers: Depending on the search engine, especially Google, you may hit a data center that has a different set of indexed pages or a slightly different algorithm. Both have an effect on the search results you see. Google has multiple data centers in order to help return you a quicker response and because it enables them to roll out different indexes and algorithms slowly and to select users. As you can imagine, it will affect the result sets you see.

Geographic Location: Some times, Google tailors the results to your location. So if you are in London, Google may show you results that are more relevant to a person in London. How? They may show more results from .co.uk domains, or from servers hosted in the area or sites that have the language.

Personalization: With most search engines now, you can now sign in, and enable personalization. That means the search engines look at your search history and other preferences and tailor the results specifically for you. As you can imagine, this will have an impact on the results you see for a particular query.

What is important for our marketing consultants is that your keyword phrases show up in your area. Regardless if someone is searching for a plumber in el monte, it doesn’t matter if they are appearing #1 in New York. It matters if they are appearing #1 in El Monte.