How To See Naked Search Results

Did you know that the Google search results you see aren’t necessarily those that your customers see? Google is gathering data on your searches for their customized search all the time. So the more searches you do, the more your personal search results are geared toward you as a consumer.

So how do you see the raw search results without that customization? First you have to log out of Google. Go to the Google homepage and see if your email address that’s associated with your google account is showing at the top right. if so, click “Sign out”.

Next clear your cookies. In Firefox you can clear just your Google cookies by going to Tools–>Options–>Show Cookies. Then type “google” into the search field and it will show you only Google cookies. Highlight them all and click “Remove cookies” at the bottom.

If you then go to the Google home page you’ll see there’s no link for “Web History” at the top right. Once you do any one search, you’ll see that web history link come back, so you’ll know that Google is STILL collecting data on your web activity.

So you click “Web History” and you are taken to a page which gives you the option to disable customized search. Click that. Now you are able to see raw search results, just as someone else who’s never searched for your business before will see.

See a demonstration of this as well as a chat q and a in the video below.

[FLOWPLAYER=http://media.mcintoshmarketing.com/live/google-illusion.flv,400,325]