Different Search Results Depending On Location

[maxcarnage]

Hello all,

I was talking to a client earlier this week and they were telling me that they were not ranking fora  desired keyword term. When I, however, ran a Google search for the keyword term in question, the client's website was showing a ranking on my end.

We are both located in California. I'm in Southern California and they're in Northern California, but I don't think that should make a significant difference should it? Anyway, I've never run into such a quandary before and am curious to know if any of you out there can help me better understand why we're receiving different search results.

Any and all insights are welcomed and appreciated.

[MonicaOConnor]

Geographical location can make a huge difference. So can the browser and whether or not you are logged into a google account when you are looking. Is this a keyword that is tracked with any rank tracking tool? If so, take that at face value. If you want to see what the SERP is, use IE, clear the cache, log out of everything and browse with and incognito window. That is about as virgin as a SERP can get.

[TheeDigital]

In addition to Monica's response, under search tools you can set your location. So set your client's city and see what they would see without any bias towards account or history preferences.

[LindaBuquet]

Yes I agree with the above comments.

Here is what may be throwing you. Pre-Pigeon it did not matter as much. I would check rankings all day from whatever city I happened to have set in my browser and it didn't matter.

But since Pigeon it does. You really need to set location to the query city to even try to get accurate results.

But even with that you'll often see different results than clients do, due to personalization. If you are checking their ranking a lot or clicking their links or checking the page, then they could rank higher for you. Sometimes it even varies by browser and as others have said can be different if logged in or not.

FYI if you ever need to check pure maps ranking realize that Classic maps is still showing the OLD algo and ranking order. But new maps is showing the Pigeon ranking order so if I client says I dropped down to H on maps, need so see which version of maps.

It all just keeps getting more complicate, doesn't it?