It’s happened more times than I can count. I get a phone call from a relatively new client (a month along in the SEO process) and they are ecstatic because they are ranking #1 for just about every phrase we are targeting. Here at DTC, we’re awesome at SEO – but no one is that good.
This usually happens because A) the client is logged in to their gmail account and Google is showing them personalized search results for their account, or B) The client has visited their site via Google on their computer and Google is personalizing results for that individual piece of hardware. If you are using your own computer to check your rankings, they are possibly tainted. The solution: use a different computer by way of proxy.
A proxy is a computer set up that allows you to access the internet through an intermediary server. There are a lot of reasons one would want to use a proxy, but for SEO purposes it is great for checking rankings.
Proxify.com is a free service that allows you to access proxy servers and it’s great for checking rankings.
Go to Proxify.com and type in “http://www.google.com/”.
Now search for whatever term you are interested in checking
Note: It’s important to remember that Proxify will be checking rankings on a national level. If you want to see how search results for a particular city it’s best to use Chrome to depersonalize your search results.
