As I learn more in my never ending quest for SEO knowledge, I get thrown another loop. My website ranks differently in IE7 than it does in Firefox. I get better rankings when googling my keywords in Firefox than I do in IE7. Am I losing it?

At first I thought maybe it was some sort of "cookie" thing with the browsers but I cleared everything and also tried it on a separate computer and the same thing happens.

Tess and Hamid: Have you heard of this? Any idea what this is all about? I know I can't do anything about it but I just found it weird.

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Shari Sultana
Online Business Manager (marketing for retail ecommerce)

Shari, can you PM me your keywords exactly as you are searching for them so we can check out the result here?

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There are a few possible off-the-top reasons for this - there's the regular 'Google Dance' that sends sites bouncing around each time Google does an update.

Also, Google queries are sent to one of any 10 Google data centers and all data centers do not produce the same search results.

The other possibility is if a browser has spyware attached to it, that will affect the search results - but doesn't seem likely to be the issue in this case.

Once I have a chance to check out the results for myself I might have a better idea what's going on

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Hi Shari, got your keywords and checked it out on our end (in Firefox and IE7) and we brought up the same page results on both search requests in both browsers so it sounds like you might want to download and install Windows Defender (it's free) and run a check for spyware.

If you have a toolbar from a specific site installed on your computer this could also bring in spyware which could affect the search result.

Spyware can do much more than just grab info from your activities - it can 'steer' your browsing sessions based on whatever agenda is at hand.

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Really!? I have a Rankquest SEO toolbar (that I never use) and the SEO for firefox addon.

I do check for spyware but if truth be told, I haven't done it in about 10 days.

Usually I use Ad-Aware and Spybot along with F-Secure. I'll try Windows Defender and see what happens.

Thanks for taking the time to check this out for me!

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Shari Sultana
Online Business Manager (marketing for retail ecommerce)

Sure thing I'm not 100% certain but since we're getting normal results here on our end for the same terms it would seem to be hard-drive based.

I've never heard of Rankquest?

Could just be the datacenters you were getting were showing you the different results - but running a check for spyware won't hurt

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I just ran Windows Defender and it came back clean. But, get this -- I just removed Rank Quest and now my serps are the same in both browsers! Unbelievable. Thank you Tess.

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Shari Sultana
Online Business Manager (marketing for retail ecommerce)

And there you go...wonder what their motivation/agenda is...When you downloaded the toolbar did they ask for your URL?

You can actually report Rank Quest to Microsoft as a spyware issue (they will add it to the Defender list of recognized spyware).
ANYthing that impacts and skews natural SERPs is 'illegal' in web-land.

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Originally Posted by Tess

And there you go...wonder what their motivation/agenda is...When you downloaded the toolbar did they ask for your URL?

I don't remember. But, you know what. I'm going to check it out and I'll let you know!

Be back in a minute...

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Shari Sultana
Online Business Manager (marketing for retail ecommerce)

Nope. It just installs.

Hmmm.

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Shari Sultana
Online Business Manager (marketing for retail ecommerce)

And, it skewed my serps results again. I just removed it.

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Shari Sultana
Online Business Manager (marketing for retail ecommerce)