How to Turn Google Personalized Search Results Off Without Logging Out

At SMX Matt Cutts said you can turn Google's personalized web search results off by adding &pws=0 to the URL of a search query. If you are logged into your Google Account this link shows your personalized version, while this one shows the general unpersonalized SERP.

Published: June 9, 2007 by Aaron Wall in google

Comments

bill
June 12, 2007 - 11:56pm

I couldn't get a change on anything I searched

Michael Briggs
June 13, 2007 - 2:40pm

Nice Catch Aaron. Dont have to keep logging out to check things and logging back in.

As to comment above my guess would be that 'pws' must stand for Personalized Web Search

dave clarke
June 9, 2007 - 10:56am

That's a great tip. It is always such a pain to have to log out of my Google account to see where my websites are ranking. Thanks!

Richard Hearne
June 9, 2007 - 11:15am

Turning off search history has the same affect?

Derek
June 9, 2007 - 6:17pm

Thank you for publishing the tip. I was just talking to a colleague about this yesterday and how I wish you didn't have to log in/out of your Google account in order to see general results.

PocketSEO
June 10, 2007 - 12:10am

Great tip... Now someone needs to write a Firefox extension to append this to every Google query.

Adeel Shahid
June 11, 2007 - 7:20am

Good to know, i always thought some of the keywords i seo'd for sites did'nt show up. But know i think i have a clue ;)

Thanks

corey
June 11, 2007 - 2:58pm

Laura commented on the wrong post..

"Hmmm. I wonder what PWS stands for.

Personal Watcher Shutoff?

Play With Search?

What do you think?"

I think personalized web search is probably a good guess.

franz enzenhofer
June 12, 2007 - 12:48pm

hello mr. aaron, you may find this tool usefull
http://www.presseblog.at/depersonalizer/

it's a search engine wrapper over google using the parameter you described (thanks matt cutt for the info). it also has a "comparison mode" where you can compare the personalized SERPs with the unpersonalized SERPs.

franz enzenhofer
June 12, 2007 - 12:49pm

hello mr. aaron, you may find this tool usefull
http://www.presseblog.at/depersonalizer/

it's a search engine wrapper over google using the parameter you described (thanks matt cutt for the info). it also has a "comparison mode" where you can compare the personalized SERPs with the unpersonalized SERPs.

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