(Entry was posted by Bob Jones on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/20/2017).

Location based ranking in SERP

Since the level of engagement in this group is quite high, I`m going to ask a dumb SEO question. A site I`m working with is ranking #6 for "accountants Perth" if I search incognito on Chrome. If I do the same query incognito in Opera, they`re on page three. The only difference I can spot is the following: Chrome sees my Internet address as Perth. Opera sees my location as Leederville (a Perth suburb). Does this mean that rankings can vary purely based on what IP 2 location database the browsers are working with? I`m going to to some more investigating into this.

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Alan Bleiweiss: Queries that bring up map pack results are going to have varied results based on geographic understanding, so this makes total sense.
Alan Bleiweiss: "near me" concepts (and actual usage in phrases entered) is a critical aspect of matching results to location of searcher. It`s a highly flawed system, of course, like many systems. Yet that`s the core concept.
Steve Wiideman: Incognito seems to still include IP-based personalized results?on occasion. I can`t explain it. Two alternatives include Search Analytics in Search Console and AdWords Ad Preview Tool. Neither use your IP.
Roger Montti: Just to put the technical cherry on the fine answers already contributed, I`m pretty sure this happens AFTER the ranking algorithm, in what`s called the modification engine. If you want to truly mask your IP searching with a VPN (like PIA) will do it. I never log in to a public WiFi without it.
Bob Jones: The other interesting thing was that both locations returned a different number of results. 45.000.000 vs 47.000.000 something.

View original question in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 01/20/2017).

Location based ranking in SERP

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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