How to “De-Personalize” a Google Search… and Remove Geographic Bias

When teaching an SEO class or working 1-on-1 with a client, we often notice that they see different search results than I do… if it is a classroom, different people will often see different results.  Sometimes the actual organic search results are in a different order and sometimes the search results page has totally different information on it.

This flummoxes people but they generally understand easily that there are three causes :

1. Personalization: if you are logged into Google, Google can change your results based on your search history.
2. Geographic Bias: Google will definitely change your results if you perform a search in two different geographic area
3. Plain old multivariate testing: Google shows different things to different people just to test it.

Sometimes the actual organic search results are in a different order.

If you want to try to de-personalize a search and de-geographic bias a search result, here is how you build a search string that does it:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=keyword1+keyord2&GL=US&PWS=0

• The google.co.uk will use the United Kingdom version of Google
• The &GL=US puts the geographic location back in the US, but without any geographic bias
• Finally, add &PWS=0 to “de-personalize” the results

Here are two links for Glenwood Springs you can try to see the difference:

• DePersonalize: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Glenwood+Springs&GL=US&PWS=0
• Normal: https://www.google.com/search?q=Glenwood+Springs