IF you are going to be using this method for checking your ranking, at least make sure you are consistent with your location and device when checking.īut incognito searching still isn’t my favorite method for checking your rankings in the search engines… Free Rank Checking Tools However, an incognito session can still be influenced by your location (based on IP address) and your device (results will likely be different on mobile and desktop).īecause of this, your results may not be consistent if you search for the same keywords on multiple devices or in different locations, even if you are using a private browsing session. These windows don’t save history or cookies, so your own preferences won’t influence your results. The browsing history personalization is pretty easy to avoid.Īll you need to do is use an Incognito or Private window. Somebody on one side of town will likely see different results than someone search on the other side of town. So even if you don’t include a city in your search for a wedding photographer, Google is probably going to show you results for photographers near you.īut if someone else typed that same query (“wedding photographers”) in a different city or state, they would see drastically different results. Whether or not you’ve visited a site before.

Some of the personalization factors include: This is because Google tries to personalize results. Google results are often different for each searcher. ” Why a Simple Google Search Isn’t Enoughīefore we get into the best tools for checking your rankings, let’s take a few minutes to talk about why doing a simple Google Search for a single keyword is a bad way to check your Google rank.

The most common answer is something like: “I just search Google for. Usually that gets me a “hmm… good question” kind of response, so I’ll ask them how they are checking to see where they rank in Google. Then I ask, “What would someone be searching for in order to find your site on the first page?” When I have a conversation with anyone about SEO, I usually find that their main goal is to “get on the first page of Google”.

Check my website ranking