This is actually a stock answer I send people pretty often. I’m regularly asked about the difference between where a client sees themselves in rankings, or their friend, kid’s football coach, etc.

You shouldn’t search for yourself as a way to measure your ranking

Google does all kinds of personalisation on your search results (based on your network’s IP address, if you’re logged into any Google accounts, even your location) and the more often you look for your own site, the more skewed those results will be.

To give an example, most people searching for “seo expert peter” see my site on the first page. But I see myself on the fourth. Essentially because I’ve searched for myself so often, but then not spent much time on my site or even bothered to click it, Google has “learnt” that I don’t like it and therefore ranks it down for me, uniquely.

The right place to get Google’s official rank for your site is their Search Console system., which is where I get my stats.

Their stats are actually an ‘average’ of your rank which is the statistically most useful approach. Because of personalisation, not everyone sees your site in the same position. Where someone is searching from geographically for example has an impact. So the average rank is the best indicator of where you rank.

There’s a commonly held belief that if you use a private browsing window somehow you’ll see the proper rankings in the search results. But all that does is prevent Google from knowing your account – they still know where you live, your IP address, in some cases the unique code for your network card – there’s plenty for them to skew your results with.