Webmaster Tools Showing Non-Existent Rankings

[TheGrid]

Hello World(pun intended)

I am seeing a phenomenal keyword phrase ranking at an avg. 9.9 on google webmaster tools but not actually seeing the ranking in reality. If i did I would be rich. Does this mean I will soon see this ranking?

[TheGrid]

I am still showing AWESOME rankings on WMT but nothing in real world. grrrr

[SmartPractice]

@Nicholas That is not enterily true. A Couple weeks back Google updated, both WMT and Analytics.

Historically Google would average the position of all links displaying under every search query. Going forward they will only average the top link for each search query.
                ex. If, when Dr. Jones searches for 'gloves', your links appear in position 1, 3, and 6. then Dr. Smith searches for 'gloves' and your links appear in position 2, 3, and 7 the average position would have been 3.6. (22/7) Now, under the new averaging system it would be 1.5.(3/2)

for more info...

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2012/01/update-to-top-search-queries-data.html

[TheGrid]

I am seeing MAYBE 2 clicks per day on that phrase and I know for a fact as I have had that ranking before, it will generate in the hundreds of clicks per day with that position. I'm thinking of sacrificing my applle IIc to the SEO gods for this to actually show up haha

[MRCSearch]

Something is funky there, and I'm betting it's the impression numbers. I've had issues with reported impressions before in something similar like this.

With a null CTR reported in GWT, are you seeing any organic traffic from that phrase in your analytics program? If not, I'd say impressions are over represented by a few orders of magnitude.

[TheGrid]

<a class="sort">Query</a>	<a class="sort">Impressions</a>	<a class="sort">Clicks</a>	<a class="sort">CTR</a>	<a class="sort">Avg. position</a>

auto loans

500

<10

-

9.9

[MRCSearch]

Sounds like someone is seeing you ranked well in a personalized search, and it's tossing off that number. Is the a number of impressions received on that keyword in webmaster tools?

[TheGrid]

Yeah this is driving me nuts, because it isn't just appearing there and going away. Last week it was avg 15 rank now it is even moving up. So bizarre.

[MRCSearch]

Nope

My understanding is this would be an average actual position per time it ranked, so if the phrase was searched 1000 times, and you received an impression 10 of those times, once #1 and the rest #10, but didn't rank at all for the other 990 searches, you'd see an average ranking of 9 (the average rank you were at when you actually got an impression).

[SmartPractice]

No, I've never heard anyone mention a future good ranking in their reports before it shows up live - and given the way Google changes their algo I find that quite unlikely, too. This sounds more like a bug.

a link for more info:

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018507.html