Google Personalizes your results in a few ways. They show results relative to your location - for instance if you type in "Pizza" and you happen to be in london, they're going to show you a results set that is slanted toward London Pizza results. They do this by a combination of location factors including IP # WiFi triangulation and others If you have visited a site in the past it is likely to show up at the top of your list. So, if you are doing ranking checking on your own site it's important to add "&pws=0" to the end of your query string E.g. http://www.google.com/search?q=website+promotion+company&pws=0 They show results based on your intent. For instance, if you search for "tiger" then "lion" then "jaguar" they'll likely show you animal results. If you search for "BMW" then "Mercedes" then "Jaguar" they'll likely show you car results. I hope that helps.