Personalization in Map Pack?

[HoosierBuff]

Hi Guys,

A question. I have a credit union client in a different part of the country. They say that when they do local searches for "Bank <cityname, state>" - they see credit unions listed in the map pack results. When I do a search in that same area with BL's local search tracker, and a few other tools I have, it doesn't show any credit unions at all, and only banks. Not only that, the map results reflect very nearby results, rather than results that you would normally see for <cityname, state>"

I'm guessing that this is due to personalization? ? ? because why would credit unions show up a bank search (they never do), and why the results not be more close to the city center.

I guess I hadn't realized results were personalized to this extent in the local pack. Does anyone else ever experience this?

 

[Yan Gilbert]

Definitely, there is personalization in the Maps. Always need to use incognito, and sometimes with enough searches/clicks on your own site or competitors', Google may pick up on the ip address and give different results.

 

[JoshuaMackens]

Ask them to send you a screenshot of what they're seeing. Many times clients say one thing but don't know technology well enough to know they're doing another. I have people tell me about a certain set of search results only to find out they're using Bing and they don't know it.

 

[JoyHawkins]

Yep - what Yan said. IP addresses and personalization can both impact what you see.

 

[HoosierBuff]

Thanks everyone. I lol'd at the "send a screenshot" request, because, yeah, how many times have I seen them say one thing, but, having searched something entirely different.

I'm going to go with IP personalization on this one. . . they did get the same result in incognito mode.