I was casually chatting to a Irish hotel owner last week when the subject of SEO for hotels in Ireland came up. Well, ok, I brought the subject up because I knew that this particular hotel was having a poor time of it on the Google SERPS. As I gently explained the situation to the good gentleman, he was having none of it. He was adament in his view that his hotel was being returned on the first page of Google for the search phrase that we were discussing.
I took him up on his offer to prove it. Sure enough when he Googled the phrase in question, his hotel came up at #4. However I had noticed the PC he was using was logged into Google at that point in time, probably somebody had logged in to collect their Gmail. When I logged the computer out of Google and searched again, the hotel was nowhere to be found in the Google listing.
The point I am making is this: In order to establish your true Google position it is first necessary to log out of Google. Otherwise Google will factor in websites that you have previously viewed into the results.
Here is a simple example for the search phrase “hotel Ireland”. This initial result was obtained while I was logged into my Google account. Notice that www.hodsonbayhotel.com is returned at #2. I had visited their hotel website a few weeks ago while logged into Google & the search engine had remembered this.
I carried out this search while logged into my Gmail account. Please note that www.hodsonbayhotel.com is returned at position #2
Now , Lets Google again but this time while logged out of my Google account. You can see that this time www.hodsonbayhotel.com is not returned in these results. This is the true position.
The true position obtained by logging out of my Google account. www.hodsonbayhotel.com is no longer in the results
To discuss your SEO project please email Alex O’Connor or go to www.digact.com