How SEO works on personalised Google

In recent months, Google has made a variety of changes which has seen its search results become more personal to the viewer, but one sector commentator has asked how does this effect search engine optimisation (SEO)?

Searchers can now see results in their rankings such as the latest social media updates from friends and family, but Dr Pete, in a post for SEOmoz, suggests this may complicate rankings as users could all be seeing something different.

He ran a search for one of his client's popular keywords using a number of methods - such as a default search, adding a pws=0 parameter, searching while logged out, SEOmoz's Rank Tracker tool and Google Webmaster tools.

His conclusion was that the pws=0 parameter appears to be unreliable, logging out made little difference to results and getting a second opinion when using ranking tools is worthwhile for more accurate results.

"It always makes sense to check your facts and search rankings are no different. Rankings vary - you can occasionally type the same query twice in a row and see two different results," Dr Pete concludes.

Michael C, in a post for SEOmoz, recently claimed Google favours domain names which contain one or more of the keywords being searched for when it comes to ranking.

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