It used to be that a #1 ranking on Google was a #1 ranking. Everyone who searched that particular keyword would see basically the same thing. Over the years, however, that has slowly changed, so that we are now at a point where essentially all search results are personalized. This has had a dramatic impact on the goals of search engine optimization, shifting the focus away from rankings and toward traffic.
The effect of search personalization is that the results you see when you search for something are not necessarily what I will see if I search for the same thing. For example, you may see that your career site ranks #7 for some big important keyword (like “sales jobs los angeles”), but when I try the search I see your site in the #3 spot. It’s quite likely that your potential candidates will see yet another arrangement of search results (where you might be #1, or #5, or you might not appear at all).
Why do search rankings vary by user? Well, in an attempt to provide the most relevant results possible, Google personalizes results based on many factors, including:
Location (both implied by IP address and stated in preferences)
Search history
Browsing history
Language (browser setting and search engine preference setting)
Device (desktop vs. mobile)
Social connections and sharing
Probably a number of other factors
The upshot of this behavior is that you cannot rely on your own search result testing to figure out how your site “ranks” any more. Running a few searches can give you an idea of where your site might generally appear, but you can be sure that it will rank at least a little bit differently for most other searchers.
However, there is still an accurate way to measure your search performance: traffic numbers. If the number of visits from Google is growing (or at least stable), then you know your site is being found. This is the primary reason that we don’t worry much about rankings and instead put our focus on improving search traffic for our own sites, as well as our clients.
