google ajax api results differ from normal search, why?

Question

I read about the Ajax API here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1539798/scraping-parsing-google-search-results-in-ruby

For some reason, I get completely different results from the same query when using the Ajax API than I do from normal search. Is there a simple explanation?

here are the two: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F+following&aq=f&oq=&aqi=0

http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&hl=en&rls=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F+following&aq=f&oq=&aqi=0

both have parameters hl=en&rls=en&q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2F+following&aq=f&oq=&aqi=0 run at the same time, they never give me the same results, often they're very different (depending on the search parameters.

what's going on?

Also, the

Answer 1

I'm guessing here, but usually if you do a google search using your regular account and have the history enabled, google will use your previous search to give you more accurate results. There are a bunch of things like that that may cause differences between searches with the exact same keyword(s)

Answer 2

The Axaj API is suspected to offer slightly different results to avoid the automatic harvesting of search result (SERP) info.

This is the same reason they only return 8 results per page and upto 8 pages via their AJAX api.

In principal they don't want people collecting this data, as it is usually used for SEO purposes in an attempt to coerce certain sites higher unduly.