The importance of clearing your cache when checking your website ranking

If you’re like the majority of website owners, you are most likely be regularly checking on how your website is ranking for your target keywords.

In order to get the most up to date and accurate results it is vital that you frequently clear your cache.
This should be done BEFORE checking your search rankings.
The reason for this is that every internet browser, whether it be Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc, utilizes a cache, otherwise known as temporary internet files. Every time you open up a web page data is sent to the cache, which it then stores for your next visit. This enables your computer to remember places you’ve been and not have to load everything again allowing the page to appear much faster. The cache is a vital part of making your web browsing experience faster and smoother.

However there are some disadvantages if you are trying to check your websites rankings. In terms of SEO checks, caching can actually work against you especially if you’ve been researching the competitions websites.

Google uses your cache to understand what search results you need to see. Google may in fact look into your cache and prioritise the results based on your previous browsing history. This can result in inaccurate ranking results for your website for particular keywords.

To get accurate real time results you will need to clear your cache for the web browser you are using.