Does the Yahoo search engine take my location into account while serving up SERP’s?
I am not talking about yahoo local, just regular Yahoo search.
When I search electrician I see Prolectricllc.com as the #2 result. I am trying to figure out if this is just because of my location, or am I #2 in the US?
My guess is because of location, because the following two results are from my area as well.
If so, isn’t this a little presumptuous? What if I am looking for widgets, would I only be shown widgets in my general area. Maybe I want to see other widgets too.
I did a little more research…
When I am signed OUT of Yahoo I see ProlectricLLC.com ranked for #2 for electrician.
When I sign IN, then I see a completely different set of SERP. The ones that I see are what I would expect to normally see, WIKI, and .gov, .edu sites.
The signed out version actually shows me results that are more closely related to my physical location. This is what makes me think they are using my IP location to serve results.
So, to test it further I logged on using an anonymous IP and see the same results that I see using the signed on version. The full list including all the big sites.
This concerns me deeply. This takes SEO out of the picture if they are using an IP location to serve results.
Does anyone have any insight?
