Do users in different cities see different SERP?

[whiteraven]

I am curious as what to expect when people in different cities search the same phrase with a location word in the string. If someone in New York, Los Angeles, and Houston search -- houston mergers and acquisitions advisors -- will the top 30 organic positions have the same result or will it vary by geography?

[tedster]

Hello whiteraven, and welcome to the forums.

The Google SERPs can and often do vary according to the location of the user. Even cities as close as Boston and New York can see a different order in the rankings.

[whiteraven]

Thanks for the quick reply Tedster...

Other than screen sharing is there a way to see or test for SERP differences from one state to another?

[tedster]

You can try using Firefox as your browser and install the Google Global add-on, available at [addons.mozilla.org...]

The Google Global add-on allows you to localize results down to the zip code level. I know that it works well for seeing localized PPC ads, but I'm not yet convinced about city and state variations in the organic results. I have the sense that IP address and/or cookies may still take precedence.

Also be forewarned, that the issue of ranking is even more complicated than geo-loocation. Google changes results at times depending on the browser in use, or very recent searches from the same computer, and whether the user is signed in to a Google account of some kind.

In addition, any search may be routed to different data centers at different times (even 1 second apart) by Google's load-balancing applications - and different data centers do not always show the same rankings.

We are in a world where the apparently simple question "where does it rank" no longer has a definitive answer.

[whiteraven]

hmmmm,

Looks like I need to get partners with a local IP address in all the markets I am targeting. Thanks for the link to the "global add-on" tool. I will give it a try.