3 monitoring tools are giving me the simular SERP ranking position but manual searching and traffic are telling me something different. What gives?
-
I have looked up SERP position in 4 different tools, 3 out of the 4 (Raven, SEO Moz, and Google webmaster tools) are telling me that the site is ranking in the 90s range. When I manually search for the term (when I'm logged out), the site lists on the 1st pages. I also see it listed as the #9 spot when I use SEO Books Rank Checker. Last month, Google webmaster says that the term got us 200 impressions. Has anyone seen this before?
Thanks
-
Hi Theresa.
There's an easy way to remove personalized search results. Just add &pws=0 to the end of the search url.
More info:
-
Thank you! This will be very helpful to send along to our client.
-
Hi
It can be quite frustrating and very disappointing when you realise that your page 1 keyword position is due to you being logged in and when you log out it drops though a hole in the floor. It's clear you know how to log out...
Recently, we have subscribed to rank tracker from link-assistant tools. It does appear to be very accurate, and will give you a graph of your serps vs competitor...
-
Here's a screen cap. Interestingly, I switched to a few different cities in my Google options, (signed out for all of them) and the top results all remained the same. This tells me there's less "local" correlation for these sites than there is strong non localized SEO factors.
-
Can you do me a favor and google the term "corporate video production" and send me a screen shot of the top 10 search results? Or just send the names of the sites in the top 10 search results.
Thanks so much for your help!
-
Unfortunately, even when someone is logged out, Google still shows personalized results. Not based on as much search history as when logged in, yet enough that it's not 100% guaranteed that what you see is what someone else will see. While they don't reveal what the methods are for doing this, possibilities include
- Personal access info (your internet connection IP address)
- location data based on your internet service providers recorded location (the nearest access point to your connection)
- Cookies stored on your browser
- Which Google data center your connection pipes into. As the index is updated, it's not instant across all data centers.
Individual tools will provide different information as well, depending on the method they use to query Google.
A very important concept is to understand that any data you obtain for a web site is, at best, useful mostly for observing trends, rather than trusting it's complete accuracy.
-
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for your response. My browsing history was cleared and I still saw my client's website showing up in the top 10 search results. SEO Book's Rank Checker Tool also produced the same ranking as my manual search.
-
Hi Theresa,
Did you clear your browsing history before you did the manual search? Your browser may be saving the site because you've already visited it. To go from the 90's to first page in your results is probably the browser.
Best Regards,
Daniel
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Improving the keyword ranking of a subject that we deal with only one or two months of the year
So I run a tip site based on the popular video game series Madden NFL. We also do NCAA and since I started getting invested in SEO, I noticed we aren't even in the top 50 for a lot of these results. What would be a good way to get started? Just throwing in some keywords that I want to be targeted?
Keyword Research | | taychatha0 -
9600 exact searches position 3 but only 125 clicks????
Seeing something a little strange on one of my clients sites. They are position 3 in Google and the only result on the page Google Authorship installed on their site. Exact match terms in the UK via Keywords tool are 9600 yet they only get 125 clicks on average for the month. There rank has not changed in the last 3 months and they have had a solid position 3.
Keyword Research | | tempowebdesign0 -
Is there a point in ranking non-competitive terms?
Hello, I wanted to know if you could still make $$$ of a term that is not competitive for people. For example if a keyword is a quote, an idea, topic, or something that isn't real but still brings more than 1K exact search a month (Several terms come out to more), how can this be monetized? If it can't, could you just own one to show off?
Keyword Research | | 6786486312640 -
Is there anyway to view the Keyword Ranking Report with the Google traffic estimator stats?
The Keyword Ranking Report currently shows site traffic and Google SERP. Is there anyway to also show google traffic estimator next to these numbers?
Keyword Research | | brianmeert0 -
Is there a pro tool or google service that I can use to see which sites rank for certain terms? Without having to first identify the url's?
For example I want to see the top 20 sites in order of ranking for top keywords in my industry. Without having to know in advance the url's.
Keyword Research | | CURT-208170 -
Why does Google adwords tool shows different search volume
I am not able to undertand the difference in search volume for same keyword under different heading. Let me make it clear. When i enter "Drupal Developement" in adwords tool, at the top, it shows Search term (1) Keyword Global monthly searches drupal development 390 Just below, it shows, Keyword ideas (100) Keyword Global monthly searches drupal development 40,500 I have selected the location U.S. My question is there is a huge difference in 390 and 40,500. Which is correct ?
Keyword Research | | seoug_20050 -
Rankings got dropped
We were ranking no 1 on couple of keywords in our countries local Google Search but from last 3-4 days we have dropped to 2-3 though we havent made any changes. Any suggestion? http://www.pakwheels.com Google: www.google.com.pk Keywords: Used Cars Cars for sale
Keyword Research | | razasaeed0 -
Google Search Volume Disparities
Hello, I have been researching search volumes for awhlie now for key terms related to my industry, as well as working towards better rankings for those terms that have higher search volumes using on-page optimization, external link anchor texts, etc. The only tool I use for this research is the Google keyword tool. Today when I was looking at the keyword difficulty for a particular term (first time I
Keyword Research | | mreisbeck
had used this tool in my SEOMOZ account), I saw how the search volumes are listed for both broad and exact match from Google's API. As I said I've based my strategies around results from Google's keyword tool, but now I see that, for a particular term that I have been focused on, there are 15,000 searches for "broad" match and 91 for "exact" match. I just checked the keyword tool at Google and there is apparently no way to set a keyword up to search for its "exact" match search statistics. Is this only available using their API? I'm on the floor here. Does this mean I've been optimizing for a term that has less than
a hundred searches a month as opposed to 15,000? If so, can anyone here reccommend any search volume tool that can deliver a higher degree of accuracy so I can make better
judgements regarding how I will spend my time and effort regarding SEO (and in fact,
to some degree, my budget for PPC)? Any help provided will be much appreciated. Mike0