The mysteries of Google
John Battelle is very happy because he’s the #1 John on Google.
Except when I do the same search, he comes up fifth:
What gives? He only posted it a few hours ago, has Google changed its ranking so dramatically so quickly? Or Google personalises its search results somehow?
Moral of the story: Don’t assume that other people’s Google results are the same as yours.
4 Comments
Hi, usually it depends where you are. I get the same results as you at Google.co.uk but if I force it to go to Google.com it does have John Battelle at the top.
Andrew: Interesting. I got my results from google.com. I’m located in Japan though, maybe it still senses that and makes a difference.
Ah, I think the most likely explanation is that we are accessing different Google data centres serving the same site. As you will always be directed to your nearest one.
Couldn’t find anything specific, but it makes sense that they aren’t synchronised, there is a bit of discussion if you Google for “google index different between datacenters”!
Anyway, the moral of your story still holds true. :)
My hypothesis:
As per Google’s explanation for saving their user’s search queries on their servers(for a limited time period after which it purges the data), Google maintains all this information so that it can provide better user specific search results based on its interpretation of past search of those users.
So obviously, John batelle is trying to Google his query while logged into his own Google account. Hence, Google (correctly) reads that he’s trying to search for his own name.. and displays it. While your past search queries show no such patter, your search results vary.