SeoMoz and incorrect results?

[alsvik]

Just recieved my weekly Rankings and On Page report.

First thing i noticed is that an important  keyword dropped big time.

"Rejser til Cypern" dropped from #3 to #40 ...

So i checked google.dk myself (using impersonal.me) and saw i was still #3 in SERP.

I ran SeoMoz's own Keyword Difficulty Report-tool. It showed me i was #3 in SERP.

Now im thinking: Did i just loose my trust in Seomoz, to whom i give access to all my GA-data?

What to do?

Have anyone else experienced this?

[JoelDay]

Hey there,

Thanks for jumping in Doug. You're spot on.

The Rankings we display for your page as exactly what Google displays when we pull the SERP. It has nothing to do with your sites status (whether up or down) and has everything to do with what Google says you rank at.

I do see that it's also been about 16 days since those rankings were pulled (thanks so a Server failure). You should be seeing new rankings in the next few days. In the meantime. I checked in the Rank Tracker tool and see that your rankings appear to have gained some ground and are back around 17-20+.

This is of course one of the things that makes my job so fun and you SEOs so important. Google is extremely volatile and likes to change things all the time.

Check out this site we set up to monitor algorithm changes at Google. http://mozcast.com

I hope that helps clear things up.

Let me know if you have any other questions.
Cheers,
Joel.

[DougRoberts]

I don't think it's SEOmoz's "fault" as such. They can only tell you what Google showed them at that precise instant they checked your rankings. Who knows what google was thinking at the time!

You don't know what the other ranking tools would have shown you if they'd checked your rank at exactly the same time as Moz or what Moz would have seen if they've checked your position some time later.

When I mentioned about your server being down - I was just wondering what other reasons might have existed for Google to fail to return your primary page. (Nothing to do with Moz)

If your traffic wasn't affected and your ranking is still in place then I wouldn't worry too much, it's just one of those things.

[alsvik]

Hi Doug

Thanks for your reply!

Yes: On the Ranking History-page for "rejser til cypern" i notice that from 30/7 my primary page is not showing. So the result i see on the ranking report from Seomoz is from my secondary page, which have dropped from #23 to #40 - but since primary page is not "indexed" (or whatever?) by seomoz, the total ranking drop is 37 (3->40)

But problem still exists: GA shows steady and normal traffic to both seconday and primary page.

Other reporting tools do not show anything wrong with that keyword/page.

I do get daily notifications of changes on selected pages. The page in question is one of them - and i havent recieved any notifications about changes on this page ...

But offcourse, if im looking for just an excuse for seomoz, it could be that our server didnt respond in that one second seomoz was requesting this page. I would never know - but i guess SeoMoz should be able to deal with that ...

:o(

[DougRoberts]

In your Keyword ranking report you can take a look at the SERP that SEOmoz saw when they collected your ranking.

Click on the little pie/clock shaped icon when you hover over your search term or click on the drop down and select ranking history.

Note that there's a comment that says:

"We gather rankings that are non-personalized and independent of search history or location. This method has provided results showing what most users see most of the time, though fluctuations can and do occur."

If you look at this snapshot, can you see what else has moved about?

#3 to #40 does seem like quite a large fluctuation, but I've seen the same thing on occasion too and I've used the keyword difficulty tool to double check too.

Remember that SERPS aren't static and depending on your niche can be subject to quite a bit of fluctuation.

Did you notice any changes to search traffic? Take a look at your google analytics over the affected days to see if there was a drop one hour to the next... Was there anything else that might explain this such as server downtime or your site being unavailable etc?

Keep an eye on trends rather than individual results but yes, do check out any surprising changes to the position of your priority keywords!

Hope this helps.