Ranking report in Pro Campaign Not Accurate?

[trickshotric]

I have been running ranking reports on my pro seomoz account for a couple of years now.

I recently added a lot more keywords to my list. Unfortunately there now seems to be a problem.

It shows that many of my keywords have dropped out of (and climbed in) the top 50 when they actually haven't. I think it's just missing the keyword out and assuming that it dropped. I'd prefer it said "Not checked".

Anyone else with a similar problem? or ideally a solution at my end...

Thanks all!

[Peterli]

Hi there!

Thanks for reaching out to us!  I am sorry you are seeing some discrepancies in your rankings  I can definitely understand if there are some frustrations if you are not seeing the rankings you were expecting.  While I can't speak for the SEO reasons why you are seeing that (Novice SEO here).  I can definitely say that when I search for the terms "ceiling mounted air conditioning unit" & "Portable air con units" in Google.co.uk (using clean browser w/ no cookies, in private browsing mode).  I was not able to find the site www.airconco.com in the top 50 on my end http://screencast.com/t/Oc0mSGwu for "ceiling mounted air conditioning unit" but I was able to find rankings (12th) for "portable air con units"

The way our tool cuts the bias within search results is by collecting the SERPs using a series of IP representing different locales and serve up what Roger thinks is the most "Un-biased."  So while your site can rank #1 for weeks in a row, it is not unusual to see it disappear for a short period of time, although the rise of blood pressure can certainly be there (we're sorry for that!).  In the meantime, you are certainly welcome to use Rank Tracker to check your rankings daily if you prefer, I have put in a few on your keywords which you should be able to check out at: http://ranktracker.moz.com/

I hope that helps!  If you are continuing to see the same thing happening you should definitely send us an email at help@moz.com so we can get you escalated to the devs if we need to.

Best,

Peter
Moz Help Team.

[LynnPatchett]

Well that is a bit odd, a couple of things to consider:

1. Those look like some pretty volatile rankings based on the fluctuations all the sites are showing. Is it possible that the serps are changing so much that literally depending on the day you rank check a page is there or not? If you cross check these dates with analytics data for specific queries do visits stay the same or are they showing some swings also?

2. The rankings for example 1 are indeed wrong now (I see you top of page 2 in google uk), the rankings for example 2 from where I am look right,  247 on page 5, your site is not in first 5 pages.

3. Is it possible that google is flipping between 2 different pages of your site to show in the serps for specific queries? This also might account for the fluctuations and can be investigated further by looking at analytics landing page data.

Basically I guess I am saying to keep an open mind in regards the rankings and try to cross check with analytics to see if you can find any data to prove/disprove the theory that the moz ranking data is wrong. I would be surprised if the moz software simply didn't check a particular phrase, although I guess you can never rule it out completely without raising a ticket.

[trickshotric]

Thanks for your help on this.

When the ranking is wrong it's either because it didn't search for it that week or it didn't see it. See the attached image (Incorrect Ranking Report 1). It shows that a key-phrase has dropped 49 places, however, it actually is still in first place on Google UK.

And next week it will probably show it rising by 49 places.

2nd image shows the same thing Incorrect Ranking Report 2.

This is happening for lots and lots of words. It's makes my full reports a little useless.

It's not a case of it say that something it in 5th place but it's actually in 15th place. It's only when it drops out of the top 50 that the problem occurs.

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[LynnPatchett]

Just to clarify, the rankings you are seeing are wrong? Not just the movement in rankings?

If the second it might be that the movement from new keywords added is shown in comparison to the previous crawl where the position was nowhere if you see what I mean. I can't remember off hand if this is how it is shown but I seem to remember it might be...

If the first, care to give an example or two for a second check? If the rankings are 100% wrong then a mail to support is likely in order.

[trickshotric]

Yes 100% checked cross browser, computer, cleared cache and private browsing! I'd always found it very accurate up until recently.

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Richard,

Are you sure the results you are seeing yourself are not modified through personalisation/localisation etc? Have you tried checking the results in another browser which you dont use to login to google accounts? This is usually the root cause for rankings confusion, I have always found the moz rankings to be accurate once this is taken into account.