Why do I see dramatic differences in impressions between Google Webmaster Tools and Google Insights for Search?
-
Has anyone else noticed discrepancies between these tools? Take keyword A and keyword B. I've literally seen situations where A has 3 or 4 times the traffic as B in Google Webmaster Tools, but half the traffic of B in Google Insights for Search.
What might be the reason for this discrepancy?
-
In my experience, the only accurate tool is goole analytics (or other analytics software, of course). Webmaster tools is helpful for sitemap and crawling related issues, but I wouldn't trust the keywords section too much.
This is even more the case for insights for search, these numbers are mostly usable to see trends, but not detailled analytics. You might want to use the google adwords tool instead, probably more reliable than the latter two: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Hope this helps!
-
Google Keyword tools are estimates at best. I would not rely on them as your sole source of traffic estimation. A lot of times Google will say that there are 1000's of searches for a particular keyword and even if you rank first you might only see a couple clicks. It's the nature of the beast. As nice as these tools are to have, it will always come down to some testing on your part.
-
Are you checking impressions or click through in webmaster tools ? Try to use other analytical tool and see the difference.
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
-
Why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster
Hi, I would like to ask why our website images not indexing in Google. I have shared the following screenshot of the search console. https://www.screencast.com/t/yKoCBT6Q8Upw Last week (Friday 14 Sept 2018) it was showing 23.5K out 31K were submitted and indexed by Google. But now, it is showing only 1K 😞 Can you please let me know why might this happen, why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster.
Technical SEO | | 21centuryweb0 -
Schema markup in tag manager for multiple locations not registering in tester tool or search console
Hi Moz community, I had implemented schema markup for companies with multiple branches. We setup an organization with multiple points of contact tag, a Local Business tag for each branch and tags for specific products/ services - all through Google tag manager. I managed to fix the product markup with a small update to the code I found in a Google forum but have been unable to revive our local business markup. The tags of the schema mark up are active but when I run the Google structured data testing tool it doesn't find any schema tags. We are seeing some of the tags show up in search console but not all of them. Has anyone else had this problem and found a solution? Or, do you have any recommendations on how to markup an organization with multiple branches? Should we have one overall organization tag and a separate one for each business or is there another way of presenting each branch? Appreciate any insight!
Technical SEO | | Alexanders0 -
Desktop & Mobile XML Sitemap Submitted But Only Desktop Sitemap Indexed On Google Search Console
Hi! The Problem We have submitted to GSC a sitemap index. Within that index there are 4 XML Sitemaps. Including one for the desktop site and one for the mobile site. The desktop sitemap has 3300 URLs, of which Google has indexed (according to GSC) 3,000 (approx). The mobile sitemap has 1,000 URLs of which Google has indexed 74 of them. The pages are crawlable, the site structure is logical. And performing a Landing Page URL search (showing only Google/Organic source/medium) on Google Analytics I can see that hundreds of those mobile URLs are being landed on. A search on mobile for a longtail keyword from a (randomly selected) page shows a result in the SERPs for the mobile page that judging by GSC has not been indexed. Could this be because we have recently added rel=alternate tags on our desktop pages (and of course corresponding canonical ones on mobile). Would Google then 'not index' rel=alternate page versions? Thanks for any input on this one. PmHmG
Technical SEO | | AlisonMills0 -
How to properly change your website's address in Webmaster Tools?
Hi There,We've launched a new website and as part of the update have changed our domain name - now we need to tell Google of the changes: Both sites were verified in Webmaster Tools From the old site's gear icon, we chose "Change of address" As part of the "Change of address" checklist Google presented, we added 301 redirects to redirect the old domain to the new one But now that the 301 redirects are in place, Google can no longer verify the old site And because it can no longer verify the old site, Google won't let us complete the change of address form How do we tell Google of the change of address in this instance - and has anyone else encountered this?CheersBen
Technical SEO | | cmscss0 -
Google Sitelinks
Hello, Good afternoon. I am having a site issue with Sitelinks. For some reason when I search Google for the brand I represent "California Olive Ranch" Sitelinks are not being generated. When I search for "Cal Olive Ranch" our site links are being generated. Our domain is Californiaoliveranch.com. Is there a way to tell Google to to change the site links to match our domain and brand name? Is this something that can be done in Google Webmasters? Thank you very much for your help. Adam P
Technical SEO | | apost40 -
DNS error on webmaster tool
Google webmaster tool is showing DNS error and that is leading to many server error (502,500) almost 50+ in every crawl. Recently Google crawled one of our sub domains that we did not want google to crawl. We blocked it via Robots.txt and also removed all the URL's and since then we are having this issue. Any suggestions how to fix this DNS error? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | tpt.com0 -
Google.com
Hi We are managing a .com site for a client working on getting the site ranking. The site is hosted in the US. The content is rich, deep and unique. The site is in a competitive market but had begun ranking top 50 for a selection of keywords and we could see many more in the top 100. The site is now going backwards and only has a few keywords ranking top 50 and all the others have disappeared from the rankings all together. Any thought as to what could cause this. The site is managed from the Uk but as mentioned is hosted in the US. No penguin issues as all content unique, rich, relevant and fresh. SEO is also managed from the UK. Thoughts
Technical SEO | | SEOwins0 -
Google Webmaster tools error?
So I am trying to set the URL preference in google webmaster tools for my site. However when I try to save it it tells me to verify that I own the site. I have already done this so where can I go to verify I own the site exactly? Maybe I am wrong and I have not done this already but even on the homepage of webmaster tools I don't see an option to "verify".
Technical SEO | | ENSO0