Different results displayed in same country and city?!

[lacantina]

Ciao everyone,

Can someone explain why my colleague and I are getting very different natural search results on Yahoo.com for quite a few of our keywords? We are both in London, UK at the moment.

I understand there can be differences between results in Europe and the states, but surely not between two searches in the same country and city!?

Anyone else experienced this? How do we know which rankings are correct?

Thanks for your help!

lacantina

[PeterLathan]

Is one of you using Google.com and the other using Google.co.uk (or any other flavour of Google)? The results can be very different

Peter
The British Theatre Guide

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by lacantina

Ciao everyone,

Can someone explain why my colleague and I are getting very different natural search results on Yahoo.com for quite a few of our keywords? We are both in London, UK at the moment.

I understand there can be differences between results in Europe and the states, but surely not between two searches in the same country and city!?

Anyone else experienced this? How do we know which rankings are correct?

Thanks for your help!

lacantina

The answer is that they're both correct. You're most likely just hitting different data centers within the Yahoo framework. They've got many, just as Google has many. Your potential visitors may hit one or the other, so the ranking is whatever you're seeing at the data center your visitors are coming from.

Tough to fully comprehend, but that's the way that a search engine works.

Brian.

[DrTandem1]

Simply because you are located physically close to your friend, your ISP may route each of your requests in completely different route. You need to do a traceroute to see what's happening.

[lacantina]

I never knew that Yahoo had data centres like Google.

I also thought that if you were in close physical locations, the results would be the same.

It's just a bit frustrating, when in one of them we're 3rd and 5th, and on the other on pages 2-3...

I can understand "minor" differences, but this is a pretty big one for the same search engine.....?

Also, is there some tool which allows you to check your rankings on the different Yahoo data centres? I remember seeing something like this for Google, but never for any other search engines...

[dburdon]

Lacantina,

first check that you're both using the same version of Yahoo, e.g. uk.yahoo.com. Second check that you're checking the same radio buttons - e.g. UK only - or not.

Then check if you're using the same operating system and browser, e.g. Firefox and XP.

Lastly, I was recently working on a laptop configured for a Spanish language keyboard. On several sites - although not specifically Yahoo - it defaulted to the spanish version. So if you're using a laptop configured for Italian there maybe some influence.

[JuniorOnline]

Originally Posted by lacantina

Also, is there some tool which allows you to check your rankings on the different Yahoo data centres? I remember seeing something like this for Google, but never for any other search engines...

hi all,

if someone knows the answer to this one, please let us know. i didnt know different data centers in the same country give different results!

thanks
T