Today’s question comes from Tahmine in Kashan. Tahmine asks:
Does Searching in Incognito Mode Affect SEO Ranking? We search from my workplace with a shared network. Would this also have an impact?
Great question Tahmine, there is one quantity unpack here.
Before we can answer that, we need to look at what actions actually affect SEO rankings and what incognito mode actually does.
We know that Google has hundreds of ranking factors. Thousands, if you count all the things SEO professionals happen to invent on Twitter.
Below that is some basic information that Google can get from your browser.
When you do a search, they know what country / language your browser is set to, they know your location and if you’ve set a Google cookie they know your search history.
advertising
Read on below
All of these things are used to provide more relevant search results specifically for you – and to explain why you might see a different set of results than someone else.
If you keep looking for something and keep clicking the same result, Google (and Bing) will recognize it and show you the result above for that search. This is useful as a lot of people still use search in the navigation pane (e.g. they type Facebook into Bing instead of going to facebook.com in their browser).
If you’re looking for something that feels local, they can use your location to pull up a pack of maps.
Whether or not this map package appears (and even where it appears to you) depends on how far you are from the companies.
advertising
Read on below
What incognito actually does
There’s a great introduction from Google to how private browsing works here, but don’t worry, I’ll summarize the key points for you below.
The goal of Incognito is to hide your story from other people using the same device as you.
It is Not to completely anonymize you.
To do this, you’ll need a VPN and TOR, your neighbour’s unsecured WiFi, and likely a copy of Tails Linux running on a virtual machine – all of which are beyond the scope of this article.
If you do an incognito search, there is still a lot of information that Google and Bing can know about you. This includes:
- Your IP address.
- Your location.
- Anything you log into during this session.
This means that Google and Bing can still Show custom results based on your IP / location / etc.
Therefore, when famous SEO experts ask everyone in a conference to do a search and click on a result, the result will be displayed higher.
This is because you are all in the same place with the same IP address and the search engine will match the result to your hundreds of searches in the past – based on ISP information and location, not your cookies.
Do search queries influence rankings?
That brings us to the heart of the question. Even though Tahmine didn’t come out and say it, I have to think that part of that question is about CTR and Rankings.
advertising
Read on below
I pointed this out above, but let’s go straight for it: Google says this is the CTR Not a factor in the typical ranking algorithm. What they mean by that is if you take away personalization and history and all of those things, they do Not Use CTR in the algorithm.
What does that mean?
It means they can Use it to personalize Your Search results based on Your previous behavior, but none of your clicks affect this ranking for others.
But what about patents and other claims?
Here there are a lot of of SEO confusion.
While you may not be using CTR as a hard ranking factor, there are many legitimate uses for it.
advertising
Read on below
For example, when they A / B test between variants of the search algorithm, CTR creates a good metric to determine which results are better.
If you find that the map package is not getting any clicks for a particular query type, you may also choose not to display any map package for that query type.
You can also use the click-through rate to determine the best position to display a people question box or similar feature.
Does Google use CTR? Yes.
Are you using it the way SEOs think?
No.
You can click your result or have other people click your result whatever they want. This will not improve your ranking.
advertising
Read on below
(Reservation: unless you are talking about results within the local card pack or something. I know a couple of black hats with a couple hundred cell phones clicking stuff and driving around and that still seems to work – but just within certain local search functions, Not within the general search.)
Back to the question: is incognito messing around with the above? The answer is no, not really – at least not in any meaningful way.
I hope this has helped clear up some nuances about what Incognito actually does and how CTR is and cannot be used.
More resources:
advertising
Read on below
editor‘s Note:: ask a SEO is a weekly SEO advice pillar written by some of the top in the business SEO Experts selected by the Search Engine Journal. I have a question about SEO? Fill out our form. You might see your answer in the next #AskanSEO post!