SEOmoz ranking report SERP

[Teklan]

I was wondering how SEOmoz the SERPs tracks? e.g. the SERP of keyword in the Google US report, doesn't give me the same result as https://www.google.com/search?pws=0&gl=us&q=keyword

Does SEOmoz check the google.com SERPs from several locations and calculate an average?

[Adam.Whittles]

No it does not get the serps from that location. Mainly because you are not based in that location and therefore Google will still pull the data from your closest data center. According to Google,

_the gl parameter boosts search results whose country of origin matches the parameter value _

Therefore, you won't get exactly the same results as if you searched from the location itself.

[Teklan]

Thanks because I'm not in the US. I thought that the gl=us parameter was to get the SERPs from that location. So what is the gl parameter doing and how does SEOmoz retrieves the SERPs?

[Adam.Whittles]

It is important to note that even though you are using the gl=us parameter in your search string, it does not guarantee that you will see the same search results from that location if you are in another location. This is because you will be accessing data from a different Google data center.