If you haven’t already read my previous post (click here) which mentioned briefly about our SEO quest, I’ll sum it up for you: Admerasia created a flash-based site that search engines cannot index but we also created new site pages that put us on Google’s radar. In fact, we are now ranked 8th in organic search results for “Asian American Advertising” on Google and 18th place for Yahoo search. Ooooh, those are lucky numbers.
A little over a week ago, I decided to check our ranking for “Asian American Advertising” on Google and discovered Admerasia.com to be Numero Uno on the list. I felt so excited that I literally jumped out of my chair to inform Dennis, our Copywriter. Unfortunately, the excitement was short lived. Dennis did a search on his computer and returned a different result. It was puzzling at first how each individual person can have such different results.
After spending some time investigating, we finally realized that the result I had was due to the fact that I was logged into our Google account which kept a detailed log of my web search history and the links that I visited. Apparently, Google search uses this data to “customize” result for each individual based on past web queries, top sites, and top clicks. Of course, no one but Google knows the exact formula used to determine search result ranking but I can only speculate that the variables in our Google account was used to rearrange the results catering to the individual’s need and internet habits.
In my Google Trends page, my top query is “Asian American Advertising” and top site is www.admerasia.com. So naturally, a search for Asian American Advertising will push Admerasia from eight place to first (while I was logged in). The second that I log out, the results returned to normal.
Another funny thing I just noticed is the paid/sponsored search results on the top and right hand side of Google’s search results page also changed depending on whether or not I’m logged in. How will this affect individuals and companies who had placed the highest bid to be first on the sponsored links? Is it fair if their paid search phrase does not result in their site being listed in the first spot? If enough people stayed logged into their Google account I suspect the search result will vary greatly. Advertisers beware, just because you have paid top dollar for your site to be listed as first for a specific search query does not mean you are guaranteed a top spot (assuming my theory is correct, of course) on every computer.
Tags: Advertising, Technology
Great post. We all know the methodology to the madness of the sponsored section of Google. But as we both found perplexing last week, why did Google generate different results for same search phrases whether you are logged in or out of Gmail. We’ll see if they will respond to your post.
Perplexing indeed. I think it will take an eternity to fully understand Google’s search algorithm. If only they will publish a full list of criterias that can potentially be factored into search results. I understand there are many Do’s and Don’ts list for Google SEO on the internet but that is just the tip of the iceberg. Google’s search algorithm is so complex and changes constantly.