Google keywords in Webmaster Tools

[jimmyzig]

While analyzing the Google Webmaster, we found several keywords that are ranked in the top 10 search results with words such as: they, was, mai, and chiang. ..

After reviewing the pages shown under the keyword "they", we did not find that keyword or its variant "them" repeated in the content of the page even once. I am not sure why "they" is ranking so high and of course, the word "they' is not effective for finding significant content.

Also the words Chiang Mai are never used separately but yet the two words are ranking far apart from each other?  Mai is ranked at 5 and chiang is ranked at 11? Impossible it would seem? I would think that the rankings would be very close together since the two words are usually used in conjunction with one another.

Can anyone please help explain what may be happening please?

[evolvingSEO]

I had a client with a similar situation. When I figured it out, they were ranking in the universal results with an image in google.co.uk - so it was a normal serp, but where you see images mixed in, and theirs was one of the images. So I would check out possibilities with perhaps something in images showing up, as well as checking different countries. This client is a US company, but was only ranking for this in the UK.

-Dan

[IrvCo_Interactive]

I'm a little confused by your question. There are two places that show keyword information in Webmaster Tools. The first is "Content Keywords" which is the words Google thinks your site is about. Those are singular words. The data there is not about how you rank in Google search results for those words but what Google thinks your site is about based on words used on your site. It sounds like that is what you are looking at?

The other place in GWMT is the Search Queries report which does show you your Average Rankings for search terms.

It IS very strange that stop words like "they" would be included in the Content Keywords report as those are usually ignored. I'm just taking a stab in the dark but is your website in a foreign language? Maybe it is a language issue.