Personalized Search : Google Tracks Searches and Changes Results

I heard of personalized search, but finally I saw it in action. I was using Shoemoney’s SERP Tool to see where a new page that was just added might be ranking. I was pretty excited that it was ranking number two for a pretty random word. I wanted to see who was number one so I ran the full search in Google. I couldn’t find the new web site. I asked a buddy to run the search and they confirmed the results or the original search. I could not figure out what was going on when I realized what shady business Google has been up to. The full story below:

My girlfriend had started a blog called Home Remedy Skin Care after I realized she had all kinds of awesome remedies that she brought over from Russia. I was pretty excited when her blog was finally indexed and wanted to see if she ranked for the term “Jhonka” (her nickname based on a StrongBad and Homestar Charecter). No matter how I searched her blog wasn’t showing up, even though I knew according to numerous sources that it ranked number two for Google.

Then it hit me I was logged in to Gmail. As soon as I logged off and conducted the search again my girlfriends site ranked. I have heard of Google tracking searches to better tailor results to individual searchers. I thought this was only happening for local search, which is another thing about Google that aggravates me, but this new discovery was a new low.

Why does Google think it has the right to tailor my search results? Why does it think that it’s algorithm can do a better job of telling me what things are more relevant than I can? The worst part about it is how shady Google is about all this. Most searchers will not notice a change like this. There is never any kind of disclaimer or an opt-in type of process.

I would like to know how many of you are bothered by this, so I created a one question survey with Survey Monkey. I will post the results once we have a sample size of 30. This is the minimum sample size needed, my background is in market research.

Take the Google Personalized Search Survey .