Google organic listings oddly different with and w/o VPN

[yahalimu]

Hi,
Like many I sometimes use a 'private' browser to check organic listing positions for my keywords.
I have noticed an oddity.
When using a private browser, all cookies deleted anyway, my main keyword is stubbornly at number 9 or 10 on Google. It's been stable at this position for weeks if not months.
When I use NordVPN and a private browser, from any random UK server, the keyword is at number 4 or 5.
I have checked over weeks and this is still the case.
Why would Google depress the listing from my area only? As this is also the location of my business I would have thought it would have boosted it as a local result.

[goodroi]

Google personalizes search results to make them more relevant to users and harder for SEOs to reverse engineer. Pay more attention to actual traffic and less attention to your personal serps.

[Kendo]

We get different rankings between Australia, India and the USA. Some of our results in Australia feature Australian news articles which are not ranked for USA which is understandable, but a pity. But consolation is found when seeing that USA rankings are actually higher overall. Dunno how they work that out :-)

[RedBar]

When I use NordVPN and a private browser, from any random UK server

You're in the UK, welcome to Google Garbage Land!

Pay more attention to actual traffic and less attention to your personal serps.

And? How is anyone supposed to get more traffic when the SERPs are so blatantly rigged in favour of US sites even when they have no chance of supplying etc?

G's personalised and localised SERPs are pathetic however you wouldn't know because you don't have to deal with their BS every day.

[yahalimu]

Yes from GB.
Been working on our site now for nearly 15 years.
Back in the day, it was a lot easier to get good results in Organic, now a nightmare.
Careful link building still works, we are on 1st page for most of out targetted terms but I am careful to issue them naturally over time and only issue 10-20 good quality links or so a year.
More than this I think is dodgy but then not all my terms are particularly competitive. Those that are are dominated by the big brands, nothing can be done about that.
All very good to say don't look at search results as they are personal but you have you have some sort of metric, total site visitor numbers is too vague.