I just noticed my SERP results are completely different when I search on my laptop and on my desktop, on my laptop I'm about 8 places above what I am on my PC??
It is likely the different PCs are getting results from different Google datacenters. If you try later in the day it is probable the SERP positions will have become the same on both PCs.
Strange. I have heard and read about personalized search but then they are based on factors such as IP, browsing behavior, tracking cookies, etc. So there has to be something that must be triggering that change in SERPs. SearchWiki could be another cause, are you logged into Google account while doing those searches???
It may be because you are logged in with different google accounts or in one computer not logged at all
One was and one wasn't, but considering I don't use searchwiki or personalize my results why would they be different?
well google might be trying to implement their search wiki experiment, that's why the difference on the logged in search. might be adjusted considering other users' activity already.
there may be problem of data center... if you tried at two different times may be at one time you got data from other data center and next time from some else... try searching again at same time from both PC and notebook... most probably you'll get the same results
if you are logged into Google you get personalized search whether you want it or not. the computer that wasn't logged in was the "real" result. if you want to be able to search whilst logged in and still see the real (unpersonalized) you need to use Joost's firefox extensions http://yoast.com/google-de-personalized-search-for-firefox-and-ie7/
Before searchwiki Google used personalized search with behavioral targeting, therefore if you commonly searched for particular queries or commonly clicked on particular results when logged into your Google account then Google behavioral targeting technology would attempt to predict your behavior and show results which are most relevant to you when performing queries while logged into your Google account. Searchwiki is really only an enhancement to their behavior targeting technology.
You may get different results if you use different IPs but I don't think that is it. if it is, the results only change their positions, maybe from 1st position to 10th position. People from USA do get different results to the results of people in India get, but only changing position like I said. Maybe the results got updated and you happened searched your laptop.
I am in this profession since 3 years, and simultaneously operate 4 + 5 Pc + 1 Laptop from a single IP I never noticed any search result difference. I think it might be problem in your search engine, e.g. google .com and google.co.in & also in time factors. It may shows different results in fraction of few mins. But not overall.
whateverandever2 i thing you are using different web browser for your pc and laptop. I am in india. I also have noticed that when i check my serp in firfox it show result from google.co.in but IE shows result from google.com and same for opera. this is when I use serch tool bar on top left of brower. I think you should try entre google.com in your address bar then check your results. As your country specific site will open and your result will be same on both pc and laptop.
I have the same problem. Different results (20 spots difference on my website) on a laptop and desktop side by side, same network, same DNS, same browser (down to the version), searching at the same time. Same everything that I could be aware of. Both browsers logged out from Google accounts to make sure that I'm using the exact same variables on each computer. Does anybody have an idea of what could be going on? I'm missing a variable here and I would love to know what is it.