SEO moz poor rankings reporting

[imageworks-261290]

How are we supposed to send ranking reports to clients if the rankings are constantly reporting false metrics

This is not the first time this has happened, but the rankings are WAAAAAAY off. What is the point of reporting rankings that are not accurate? What is the possible cause of this. Is there a solution? What is SEOmoz doing to improve their ranking programs.

Our client actually ranked #2 for "northern Virginia HVAC contractors" when moz had us not in the top 50!

How are we supposed to bank on information that is so consistently unreliable?

northernvirginiahvaccontractors.png northernvirginiahvaccontractorsrank.png

[JoelDay]

Hi Scott,

You can absolutely rely on the tools. It is 100% accurate. The problem was that you are tracking a specific subdomain and your ranking for that keyword is not in that subdomain.

You could resetup the campaign as a root domain campaign as a catch all. That will get you anything off of that domain regardless of whether it's www, blog, store, or whatever.

I know it's frustrating and seeing your ranking suddenly drop off can be worrisome to say the least.

What you can do in the immediate is to set a 301 redirect from http://ssihvac.com to http://www.ssihvac.com and once Google catches up with that, you'll likely see your ranking position returned to the www without having to archive your campaign or anything like that.

You really don't want the www and non-www to resolve independently anyway, so that's something I recommend in general anyway.

I hope that helps.
Cheers,
Joel.

[imageworks-261290]

This is Scott with IWS --

I see what you are saying...would you say we can rely on the reporting we get to be accurate then, or are you suggesting we double check using the keyword tool or a third party tool?

I hope you can see that i as the owner, find this a bit cumbersome to review when my SEO team presents me with things that don't reflect reality...and this is not the only time this has happened. . I don't know why Google changed things either...but its important to me to get accurate rankings for all our customers without having to use multiple tools. We manage many clients so we really planned on your system being our solution...if you have another recommendation please let me know. Thanks. And thanks for such a good reply.

[JoelDay]

Hi there,

Thanks for the question! I hope I can get you taken care of here.

I took a look at your screenshots and at your campaign and see that until August 14th you were ranking for www.ssihvac.com at which point Google stopped ranking you for that and started ranking you for ssihvac.com without the www.

The reason you don't see that number on your campaign is that it's setup for ONLY www.ssihvac.com and will consider anything outside of that subdomain to be an external page.

Why Google switched up your URL, I wish I could tell you. Is it possible there was some rebranding efforts at the time?

I will also note that if you look at the keyword in your campaign you will see your site listed at number two. See this screenshot: http://www.screencast.com/t/tPQlhv81sJ

I hope that clears that up.
Cheers,
Joel.

[CoreyNorthcutt]

Agree with the other posters on contacting support, and share your frustrations.   SEOmoz is an awesome product on the whole, but we actually don't use SEOmoz's rank tracking for this, and other reasons (poor exportable reporting, only tracks weekly, doesn't track various other keyword factors, doesn't plot competitors).

Maybe some day they'll get all of the above polished, then plot the ranks against MozCast.  Can only hope!  

[malecce]

I check the positions of keywords, too   with IBP software,  that is sure that is in real time.

Ciao

Maurizio

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hope you get this sorted out guys, but you are probably going to get a faster answer if you create a support request and let someone take a look for you.

Andy