Google personalizes search results even when you’re logged out, new study finds

Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by jonas21 on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @12:50AM (#18605963)

In your first example, >90% of the text on the page is in the "More Like This" section which is heavily personalized by Pinterest. So I'm seeing different content than you are, and Googlebot saw different content than either of us. Given the complete randomness of the content in there, I wouldn't be surprised at all if "monkeys" appeared on the version that was indexed.

In your second example, the word "monkeys" does appear on the page, in the "Show reviews that mention" section.

More importantly, did you have a result in mind for this query that isn't showing up? It seems somewhat nonsensical.

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by prepend on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @01:37AM (#18606138)

Thanks for the reply. I’m on mobile and searched on mobile and I don’t see “show reviews that mention.” I do see “read reviews that mention” but that includes stuff but not monkeys [0].

The Pinterest page perhaps has monkeys at some point, but doesn’t now.

This isn’t a real search, I just added something whimsical (and I miss San Diego burritos). This is behavior I remember but don’t typically track so it’s hard to remember on command.

Note you can use search tools | verbatim and it will return pages will all terms. The Pinterest page is still there, but the trip advisor page is missing [1].

[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/Xlp8lsk [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22monkeys%22+burritos+san+d...

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Re:Google personalizes search results even when you’re logge... by andrewprock on Wednesday December 05, 2018 @01:24AM (#18606084)

As loathe as I am to invoke Inception, having an advertising platform index advertisements and then sell my traffic to advertisers feels like a recursive death I don't want to die.

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