Very interesting.. This had been described by an expert as "the most ambitious attempt to game Google's search results that he has ever seen." Although JCPenney denied any involvement, it fired its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex.
Each search request can go to a different google data center and these are generally out of sync for some results.
There are ways, however, that you can opt out of personalized search to find your true ranking:
1. To do so through Google itself, visit...
I think even with the update, domain names would still hold good weight because the URLs are taken into account as an entity and as a possible point of reference for the website.