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Some webmasters will kill for a top ranking. Others will get it when they least expect it. A WebmasterWorld member talks about how he's ranking above Amazon for his brand new site which has already been fully indexed. He wonders if this is a mistake, since he's doing so much better than the bigger competition.
That's a good question. There are a few factors that can influence high rankings. The obvious culprits include domain age (it may be a new site under his ownership, but was it a high-authority site under another's ownership?) and inbound links (if the content is good, you'll get good links, right?).
Then there's the other side of the coin. Perhaps the guy isn't ranking so well after all but his personalized results are showing up. Don't forget; you need to turn off personalized web search in order to see what the world is seeing. To do that, append &pws=0 to your search results like this (or log out of your Google account).
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
Mark
05/22/2008 03:00 pm
There are many Google positions for your website. The main Google website, your personalized Google AND your country Google. So the results may vary a lot sometimes. So keep that in mind.
Ayo
05/22/2008 03:14 pm
I guess until we know the exact algorithm Google uses it will be hard to consistently predict accurately how well a particular site will rank, particularly if it is a relatively new one.
Jaan Kanellis
05/22/2008 09:00 pm
Couldnt this just be the normal fresh factor we see everyday?
Chris
05/22/2008 09:13 pm
I always love the personalized rankings of my own sites...it makes me feel better than when I search without personalization and realize I've still got some work to do:) Thanks for the article and both sides of the coin.
Abhijeet Pathak
05/23/2008 02:30 pm
The search results differ when you see them while you are logged into any Google service and not...