Google manipulating search results

[JackPowers]

Why is it that google decide to 'hide' your own sites, so that when I search for a specific key phrase my site is much lower than if I use a proxy?

Doesn't anyone find it a little discerning that Google apparently knows exactly what your sites and even articles are?

[sweetfranky]

I'm not exactly sure what you mean. Are you still signed into google when you search? That tends to make you near the top but when you log out you can see your real position.

[paulgl]

Of course google is going to manipulate search results.
That's why they are #1.
And if they know what site is yours, and you are searching
for sites similar to it, I think it's pretty intelligent to show
you other websites. Somehow they know that if you are truly
searching, then why would you want your own site to show?
You already know about it, right?

If you have a site on best boats, and do a search for best boats,
google may assume you would not want the results cluttered with
your own. It would seem kind of lame to really want to do a search
for best boats and have your site come up as #1. Like your going
to actually visit your site on best boats it to find out best boats.

There are better ways to find your SERP.

Google is all about search result manipulation. That's why they have
$20 billion + in the bank.

Paul

[JackPowers]

I use a proxy to see my results, I am just a bit concerned over what kind of info Google actually stores. How would google know that an article is mine for example? Makes me a bit paranoid as to how Google track stuff.

[RedEvo]

Does sound like the old logged in problem going on here.

d

[rayray7]

The amount of data they store will drive you nuts. Google is known to have teams that visit forums and learn what techniques we are doing. How do you think they know how to put the brakes on certain things. Remember when blogs brought in thousands of dollars. Fools went into forums and started explaining how google was a cash machine. Before you know it, easy payday stopped and many have never recovered from it.
I use a simple rule: always assume somebody is watching --- online , cellphone, . So be careful people in activities you do not want "big daddy" to find out.

[uday1583]

Hve u clear your caches and history and wrked out.... may be that is the issue... me too had the same....

Clear histroy & cache then restart machine ....check..

[Josh Gould]

They may not be manipulating or hiding anything; is the proxy you are using based in the same country you live in? Remember, results can change based on your location (which is determined by your IP address, or the proxy being used).

Try searching for the term using Google's Ad Preview Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/Ad...ingPreviewTool

Change the "Country" and the "Google domain" fields to the appropriate ones and check things out. For an example of different results, try searching something like "Apple" using the United States and Google.com vs Canada and Google.ca...

You'll notice the order on the SERPs changes and different sites appear depending on the location chosen.

[Fraggler]

Google Webmaster Tools gives a great summary of your SERP. You can cycle through their servers too to see where you sit.

[jimbo999]

Based on the location of the proxy, you may get different results even if the proxy is in the same country you reside.
Google has a pile of datacenters, far more than 1 per country. Some times a proxy in a different location but same country hits a different data center that has not been updated yet. One datacenter will always be ahead of another.

Google does not 'hide' results from you. As you said your pages still appeared, just in a different position.

[Sancho Sanches]

Do you know this for a fact or are you just trying to explain the situation as if that is a fact but it's just your opinion?

Because that makes no sense and if it's true it's one of the most useless and dumbest things I've ever heard Google doing, a lot like their taking away the search button.

My site on a search results page is easy for me to ignore regardless of what position it's in.

It's not like Google is taking a mountain out of my way for my convenience.

Besides, I don't believe what you say is true since what is happening to this guy hasn't happened to me when I look for my own sites, proxy or no proxy.

Originally Posted by paulgl

Of course google is going to manipulate search results.
That's why they are #1.
And if they know what site is yours, and you are searching
for sites similar to it, I think it's pretty intelligent to show
you other websites. Somehow they know that if you are truly
searching, then why would you want your own site to show?
You already know about it, right?

If you have a site on best boats, and do a search for best boats,
google may assume you would not want the results cluttered with
your own. It would seem kind of lame to really want to do a search
for best boats and have your site come up as #1. Like your going
to actually visit your site on best boats it to find out best boats.

There are better ways to find your SERP.

Google is all about search result manipulation. That's why they have
$20 billion + in the bank.

Paul

[amps]

I always find that my position will vary a few spots related to my ip address, or whether or not I am logged into Google. If I go through a proxy site the results never seem to dance around, but always fall in the same range. I do believe Google has complete control over the data and does manipulate the serp.

[writeman]

I am and SEO specialist and online content writer and have long suspected [for at least 2 yrs now] that Google has been manipulating search results. I find it interesting when I typed in "Google manipulating search results" [w/out quotation marks] into Google there were virtually ZERO relevant results about this topic, whereas Yahoo had numerous results show up. I firmly believe Google no longer provides TRUE organic results--they, IMHO, prostitute themselves out to the almighty dollar. Someone needs to come up with a campaign to expose Google's doings, raise public awareness, and then create a search engine that ACTUALLY DOES provide the organic results Google used to provide, before they got all full of themselves [and were infected with greed].

[yukon]

OP, is getting personalized results.

Clear your browser history, & log out of Google products.

[yukon]

Originally Posted by Fraggler

Google Webmaster Tools gives a great summary of your SERP. You can cycle through their servers too to see where you sit.

The data on GWT is about a week behind. Very slow to update.