fracas

Recently, I was in the Fuelmyblog forums, and happened upon a thread talking about where Fuelmyblog came up when searched in Google. A reply by MytMouse stated:

“Google is personalized by your IP address. People will get different answers based on where they are located in the world.”

Knowing some would find this a surprise, and others, while not finding it a surprise might still not know what to do about it, I decided it was blog-worthy.

Now, most of us already know that Google Adwords does target us by our IP address for the purpose of direcing the most pertinant ads to us when we generate a search. In fact, their Adwords learning center page states this:

Google can sometimes identify a user’s IP address to determine a user’s general physical location. An IP address is a unique number assigned to each computer connected to the Internet (such as 10.32.20.135). The IP address is automatically assigned by a user’s Internet Service Provider (ISP).

We’ll only use the IP address to show regionally (region and city) targeted or customized ads, or when a user searches Google.com from any location.

Regionally targeted and customized ads: If a Google user searches plumbers from a New York area IP address, we may display regional or customized ads targeted to New York, even though New York isn’t in the search query.

Google.com searches: If a user with an IP address in France searches on Google.com, the user might see ads targeted to France, even though the user isn’t accessing Google.fr.

But what about the actual search query, otherwise known as the (search results page) SERP?

SEOBOOK has this to say:

“If you are logged into a Google Account they will bias your search results based on websites you have visited, especially those you have clicked through to from search results.

If you visit a site or page frequently they will improve the positioning of that page in your personalized search results. If you visit a page occasionally just rank checking, and then sometimes clicking onto your result then clicking back nearly immediately Google will demote those pages in the SERPs.”

So this, (to use a very technical term) appears to suck. When what I want are results based on whatever new thing I’m searching for and not biased by the assortment of things I may have already searched for, I want Google to pretend they’re Vegas and just live up to that old adage,

“What happens in Vegas Google stays in Vegas Google.”

As a Canadian, when I attempt to search Google.com, I am always directed towards Google.ca and my results may be biased with results that favour Canadian sites. If you, like me, like to have your own way… like to be the boss.. then you likely, like me, want fresh SERPs.  By gum… I’m going to not only find a way to get them, I’m going to share that information with you.

The following, are options I’ve found that you can use when searching with Google.

1. First, make sure you’re not logged into a Google account (like those used to participate in Blogger). Indeed though, this could be a fair pain in the posterior, for if you’re blogging, and trying to search something you’re in the middle of blogging, having to log out to search and then log back in, is inconvenient.
2. Or… log into your Google Web Search History and disable it. Look in the top right hand corner near your Gmail address. Disable the feature. Once you have, Google can’t return personalized results because there will be nothing it can go on.
3. Search using a proxy such as Anonymouse. With this option, even though I am Canadian (and that could be a whole ‘nother post in itself) I am able to search not just Google.ca but Google.com
4. Disallow Google to store cookies on your computer. The downside to this though, is that Google Personalized Search History won’t work after you disable the cookies from Google.com. Once you choose this option though, you won’t be automatically logged in to other Google services and may have to type your user name and password each time you have to login. If you aren’t one who likes to use the always logged in features so readily available these days, then this won’t be much of a loss to you anyway.
   • IE: Click Tools->Internet Options->Privacy->Sites
   • Firefox: Click Tool->Options->Privacy->Cookies->Exceptions
5. Purchase or download software that hides your IP address.
6. Block cookies from Yahoo, Google and MSN and then use Dogpile.com for searching these three search engines simultaneously.
7. Use Scandoo Google, Scroogle Google, or the depersonalizer (which can be found here).

More information on this subject can be found here and here.

Please note that Fracas is an entertainment blogger, not a technofile. In other words, I’m just as dumb about all of this as the rest of you. If you happen to know more on this subject and feel you can add to the information in this post, please do leave a comment and share. I might even decide to add you to the FracRoll for it, and hey… maybe one of these days there’ll be some hot bra (or whatever might knock your socks off) photo here just for you as a thank you! 

And if you’re found any of this even remotely helpful or educational, why not pick one of these avenues and share the post with others?

And while this is no laughing matter to some people, perhaps after such a serious post you’d enjoy the de-personalized humor of some of the good folks over at Humor-Blogs?