A Google Account is Google’s universal login system, just like Facebook’s or any other similar site. However, there are a couple of things to bare in mind:
- One Google Account signs you in to all of Google’s different services.
- It leaves you signed in all the time, unless you explicitly sign out.
This means that if you use GMail, Google Drive or any of their other services, you have a Google Account, and by default you’re logged into that account all the time, for all their services, including the main search engine itself. This is what allows Google to collect so much data about you, and allows them to personalise your experience with their services accordingly.
This is perfectly fine, of course (unless you don’t like being tracked all the time), but it does impact search marketing to an extent. This is because the search results themselves are one of the things that can be personalised. So you just have to bare in mind that just because you can see your site at #1 in the rankings doesn’t mean that your customers can. In fact, all your competitors probably think that they’re #1 too!
Of course, there are other factors that go into personalising search results (such as geographical location), but if you do want to check your rankings, make sure that you are signed out of your Google Account first. Not that rankings are all that important, of course…