Andrew Goodman posted a note on the Traffick blog about search personalization and the death of rank checkers.

Personalization is search result modification. If you have turned on personalization in Google: Google becomes like a friendlier filing cabinet, (Thanks to Jim Hedger for this analogy). Personalization helps Google remember where you’ve been, what you’ve looked for, and which results you’ve clicked.

Many people use search engines like filing cabinets. They repetitively search for the same items, and expect to find the same results. Rather than bookmarking their favorites, they use the search engines to remember where they found them. Personalization helps them remember which pages they’ve already visited, and on what date they last visited it.

An interesting side effect is a trap I’ve seen countless people fall into. Turn personalization on, and if you use the “Google filing cabinet” approach, eventually the pages you repetitively select will float to the top of the results. Voila: Your site about dogs really can rank #1 for seo news! In other words, your results become skewed.

More pertinent to the whole discussion of why rank checking is dead is the application of localization algorithms to results across most possible search queries. A query for “seo service” run in NYC will return different results for the same query in San Jose. Websites whose businesses are located physically closer to the searcher are favored over more distant ones. So, as a search marketer, if you are located in Seattle and your client is in Los Angeles, your rank checking tools will be irrelevant. The results you see in Seattle are likely to be skewed / relevant to your location. Here’s an easy way to test (and show clients) the differences; if you have a wireless device (Treo, Blackberry, “Q”, Nokia e61/62 etc…) use it, and your desktop simultaneously.

Google “Real Estate” on your desktop, and at the same time, on your wireless device. When I try it, I get 5 results out of 10 different. If you use an old fashioned rank checker, your results won’t show you that. Frustration with bad / useless information is why we started Enquisite - to provide accurate, relevant, and meaningful business intelligence to anyone in search marketing - SEO’s, SEM’s, website operators, Internet Marketers, or simply website owners just trying to get a simple answer to a simple question: How are my clients finding me? It’s turned into a lot more since then, but the original search engine position reporting tool remains.
From the Fortune Interactive Article:

This is the process of SEO competitive intelligence and doing it properly will require, at a bare minimum, extensive data collection, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and multivariate analysis. There will always be an element of art to SEO but now much more science is required than before.

I couldn’t agree more. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. Solid SEO’s who know what they are doing use business intelligence tools to help them succeed. They don’t launch darts at dartboards, hoping to get it right, and adjusting if they don’t. They plan and execute with well considered strategies that deliver long term results.

Enquisite started off as a passive rank reporting system. That’s the system I discussed with Andrew over pizza in 2005. Don’t bother using a rank checker. Use Enquisite, and accurately understand how your customers are finding your website.