Okay, so I have disabled web history when signed into my Google accounts and also have it disabled via cookie when I'm not signed in. That said, I still suspect that I'm getting personalized search results because some of my articles have seen a considerable spike in ranking (from my search), but little to no increase in traffic. I had a friend who lives in CA try the search and he got the old rankings I had, not the updated ones which makes me think that it's due to personalization or maybe I'm just connecting to a different server. I was wondering if anyone could offer insight into this: is Google perhaps making personalized searches by IP or something? For those who didn't know, Google places pages that you visit often nearer the top of the search results unless you turn the option off in web history. This is what I suspect is happening to me, even though I have it turned off. Additional info: clearing cookies has no effect, nor does changing browsers. I haven't had someone from this area check for me. My friend is in CA and I'm in NY.
Why don't you use a proxy website to check the exact results? If you don't want to, make sure to log off from google account before checking the rankings.
In my observations I've noticed that this personalized search is showing effect on Google Chrome browser than on Mozilla FF. I have recently shifted to new ISP. This is done basically to test the Google personalized search results. Now, on Chrome I see fresh results. So then I realized that Google is tracking searches based on the IP addresses. I can't claim this is the fact but this is what I have learned. Ok,now my problem is solved after shifting to the new IP but I am not sure if the same thing will repeat when days move forward and Google collects all my personal info! However, I am taking care to keep off the personalized search on all browsers and accounts. Let's see what happens.
I've logged off, turned off web history, and turned off personalization. I've looked at it from different IP addresses and proxies and they give different results, but are also in significantly different locations. Like I said, I had my friend from California check it out and he got different results. So the only two explanations, imo, are a bugged/changed personalized search or database differences. But we're talking about huge differences, like 10+ spots in some cases.