One of our clients has a ranking anomaly happening...

[TaylorRHawkins]

Good afternoon, Mozzers!

My boss and I noticed a weird thing happening in the rankings for one of our clients. Just in case the niche has anything to do with it, the client is an HVAC company.

When my boss is in an incognito window and he googles "commercial HVAC Portland" - The client showed up at #8.

BUT ---- When I googled the same keyword-string in an incognito window, the client showed up at #14.

We are both on the same IP. And we did these searches within minutes of one another.

Does anyone know why / how this might be happening? We'd love to hear your thoughts!

[Joe_Stoffel]

I do not think this is a ranking anomaly, I just think the results are being personalized despite the common belief associated with Incognito mode. Check out the link below which will take you to the Google Chrome Forum post 'Does Incognito Mode Remove Personalized Search Results'. The top answer provides a great explanation as to why these results are not always as unpersonalized as one might think.

https://support.google.com/chrome/forum/AAAAP1KN0B0Zaq9rFwdLWg/?hl=en

"When using Incognito Mode, you’re most definitely not anonymous; you are exactly as identifiable, trackable, followable, and recordable as a Normal Chrome window.  All browser info, system, plugins, IP connection, location details, etc. are provided exactly the same in Incognito, and the websites and webservices you go to are provided all the same info as a Normal window.  Incognito effectively provides a very quick way to start an empty session; but if you keep using Incognito without ever closing the last Incognito window, you are just as identifiable and trackable as using a Normal window, and you gain nothing by using Incognito. (If you want true web anonymity, you need to use proxy servers or proxy services.)"

?hl=en

[Agenciaseomadrid]

The Joe Stoffel answer is perfect, and also you can check at the bottom of the web results of google we google thinks is your position or city, it can change becouse google checks in different server your results. Maybe google changes your position in an incognito or stop from showing the city