Anonymous search for Google - what does it tell us?

[Reno]

As I'm sure everyone here knows, there are services which claim to offer anonymous searching via a proxy server, where no history is kept and thus the search should be "clean".

When I to to GWT and check my top keyword phrases for my geographic locale, then plug those exact phrases into an anonymous search service, the results are *totally* different from what GWT says. Not just a little different -- I'm talking no relationship whatsoever.

So is the information gleaned from an anonymous search of any value? Is this sort of SERP closer to the "old" Google, prior to all the personalizion, account login cookies, etc? Am not sure how seriously I should take the results that I see, in terms of page construction tweaking...

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[tedster]

If a proxy-based search gives you results that show literally "no relationship" to what you normally see, then something is wildly skewed on one side or the other. However, many here do report seeing Webmaster Tools ranking information that does not line up with regular search results.

Also, have you tried pausing your web history, and then searching while logged in to a Google account?