Of course, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) suggested it was no mere coincidence that Google products would come up third (as opposed to being the top result)...as if that was evidence that Google was cooking its results. Why third, why not the top result? After all, isn't that the goal of search engine optimization (SEO)???
So I thought I'd conduct several different types of searches using Chrome's Incognito browser, and the results were a bit odd to say the least...see below.
First thing you notice is, that Bing returns results that are automatically localized to Seattle, WA. Google apparently doesn't localize search results for the search term, "news". So I thought this deserved a closer look.
How do I know Google's using IP? Because I connected to a proxy server and the localized results reflected the proxy server's location. And I also switched out Google public DNS for IE's preferred list of DNS.
I suspect the browsers themselves could probably obfuscate your IP. I know sites themselves - Google especially - could ignore your IP if they wanted to. But this just goes to show, that even if you block cookies, and turn off scripts, any site you visit can find out where you're located, by looking at your IP.
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