Google Ajax Search results differ from “normal” Google Results?

Question

I guess anything important you might have to know is within the title. If I use the Google Ajax WebSearch API with, for instance, "Dummy Search" as phrase, my resultset is a different one than if I perform the same phrase over google.com.

How can that be?

My querystring paramter options are exactly the same, language etc.

Thanks in Advance & Kind Regards

Answer 1

As you may know, Google search results may vary between different Google data centers. Kinda this is the story with the API calls as well, the results are retrieved from a different DC than what you're routed to when you type Google.com in your browser bar.

Answer 2

methode is right, Google has many data centers and maybe results could be different.

For example, using Google Maps API, in the documentation it is explained that results may be different from that obtained searching on maps.google.com, and I spent a lot of time explaining my customers that my shop locator's results were not wrong because different from results on maps.google.com :-)

Answer 3

I have also found that if running under a heavy load the results are sometimes completely wrong. This as i understand is prevent people from having accurate rank checking mechanisms