Google Deception?

[David Rice]

People can't find your video, web page, or Blog?

Your Google search results, and Google search results conducted by someone else, are not the same.

As a default, Google personalizes your search results based upon your past search activity, and personal material that you have uploaded to the Web.. Which means that if you have uploaded a video, created web page, or a Blog entry, and then you perform a Google Search to determine your search standing, you will get false search results. In order to get a accurate search result based upon someone else doing the search, you must turn OFF "personal search results". It's a small button located on the upper right side of the page.

If you do not turn off personal search results, every time you perform a Google search for your video or web page, Google will list your personal pages, and pages that you visit most, toward the top. That is why you can easily find your own video, web page, or Blog entry, when others can not.

Dave

[Tim Polster]

Interesting. One more impossible thing to try and control when it comes to your business and the internet!

[Robert Benda]

I use separate browsers for everyday, and when I check my search engines for this reason.

However, more effective is Google Webmaster Tools, Keyword tools, and Analytics. Webmaster tools in particular since it will tell you your page rank based on keyword searches.

[Gary Huff]

Originally Posted by David Rice

If you do not turn off personal search results, every time you perform a Google search for your video or web page, Google will list your personal pages, and pages that you visit most, toward the top. That is why you can easily find your own video, web page, or Blog entry, when others can not.

Yep, I log out of my account whenever I do a Google search for something related to myself to see where I stand in the rankings. I've been caught a couple of times where I'm impressed how high I rank, until I remember I'm still logged in!

[Heiko Saele]

... or just tell your browser to delete all the history and saved settings and cookies every time you close the program.

It does not only help with Google, but with a lot of other nosy sites who want to save information about you.

On the downside it is not as comfortable, because websites forget who you are and you need to type every login and everything from scratch as soon as the browser had been closed in between. But that is a price I am more than willing to pay for a little less invasion of privacy.

[Chris Medico]

Originally Posted by Heiko Saele

... or just tell your browser to delete all the history and saved settings and cookies every time you close the program.

It does not only help with Google, but with a lot of other nosy sites who want to save information about you.

On the downside it is not as comfortable, because websites forget who you are and you need to type every login and everything from scratch as soon as the browser had been closed in between. But that is a price I am more than willing to pay for a little less invasion of privacy.

Or get a cookie manager plulgin if you browser supports such a thing and have the best of both worlds. CookieMonster is a great cookie manager.

[David Rice]

All your suggestions above are well taken. However, the point I am making, is that the average computer user and most web searchers do not tweak their Google Search. That is why so many people have such a hard time finding your web sites and your videos. Remember, we are not talking about your computer, your web browser, but the computer/web browsers of the people who someday may be your customer/client.

[Robert Benda]

Originally Posted by David Rice

All your suggestions above are well taken. However, the point I am making, is that the average computer user and most web searchers do not tweak their Google Search. That is why so many people have such a hard time finding your web sites and your videos. Remember, we are not talking about your computer, your web browser, but the computer/web browsers of the people who someday may be your customer/client.

If they're doing a new search, like for a wedding videographer, that won't be true - though your website's page rank for yourself may be different than what the potential client will see because of personalization. (personalized for yourself, you show up #1, for the client, maybe not even first page).

That's why I suggested Webmaster tools to see where you actually rank. Then you can figure out if you really need to do something about your SEO. My site shows up first for me, #8 for others.

[David Rice]

Have a new person, who has never search for your site before, perform the search. Someone who has no record of ever visiting your site before.