Understanding Average Position in Google Anaylitics
-
Hello here,
I have a question about the Queries report under "Search Engine Optimization" in Google Analytics: is the "Average Position" information a reliable one? I have a lot of queries that appear, from that report, to average first position, but when I verify that on Google by connecting anonymously, I can't even find my result on the first page! To me, that information is worthless and makes me think all the rest of that report is unreliable. If anyone can help me to understand it, I'd really appreciate it.
Thank you in advance for any thoughts.
-
Thank you Dimitrii for clarifying how it works, what you describe makes sense even though it is still worthless for me.
Thank you again for your help, appreciated.
-
Hi there.
Well, yes, quite honestly, i don't use that metric at all. The way it works is explained here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6155685?hl=en and here is a moz post on the accuracy: https://moz.com/ugc/testing-the-accuracy-of-avg-position-for-search-queries-in-google-webmaster-tools
The problem is that it's literally average. for all phrases it ever ranked for, all locations, devices etc. So, if somebody searched with some weird configuration and the page ranked number one, even if that page ranks #100 for everybody else, the average rank will be #50, see the picture?
hope this helps
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
-
Track buttons in Google Tag Manager
Hi! First question: I am wondering if it's possible to track two buttons with the same code in Google Tag Manager without changing the code? There are different page URL's.. Second one: My tags are displayed in Google Analytics as 'events'. When I put the events in 'goals', the number of times it fired differs from my events. Someone who can help me with this issue?
Reporting & Analytics | | conversal0 -
Google Analytics, Wordpress, Sumo - who to trust
Something is wrong. I have a website that according to Google Analytics gets zero relevant clicks, with most of the clicks it does get coming from Russia. Wordpress says it gets a hundred or so visitors a month, with most traffic going to the pages that I know rank. Sumo says the heat map got 76 clicks. How would you figure out what's really going on?
Reporting & Analytics | | julie-getonthemap0 -
Query on google analytic benchmarking report
Hi All, First I select My Industry Vertical - ABCD then I select Region - US ( all region) then size by daily session - 10000-99999 finally reports appears "Blank" but when I decrease daily session from 10000-99999 to 1000-4999 or less then report is perfect. So what does it mean? My Avg daily session is 70k to 80k. So how to analysis benchmarking in this case? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | pragnesh96390 -
No Google Analytics code on page BUT reporting is active
How could Google Analytics be reporting data if my pages don't have the GA code on them? Mike
Reporting & Analytics | | Mike_c0 -
Conflicting numbers in Google Analytics
I am getting 2 completely different numbers in Google Analytics.According to the graph on my Dashboard organic traffic decreased ~40% comparing June 7 -> June 6.However, when I dig a bit deeper and look at the 2 dates specifically compared to each other I get a `3% increase in traffic.When I look at the traffic on just June 7, I get the number indicating the increase.Any ideas or someone getting similar conflicting numbers??
Reporting & Analytics | | theLotter0 -
Testing IP Exclusion Filters in Google Analytics
(I hope I haven't missed something simple 😉 I have add IP exclusion filters in Google Analytics. What I haven't been able to determine is how to test to see if it is working. I'd imagine there would be a dip in traffic but if a site is low volume it might not even register. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | AUDigitalMarketing0 -
Advanced Segment on Google Analytics
Hello there, hope everyone is allright and rockin' the SEO world 🙂 Was wondering if anyone could give a tip on how to configure an 'Advanced Segment' on Google Analytics. Basically I need to isolate traffic for 4 specific subfolders. E.g. www.mywebsite.com/solutions/A www.mywebsite.com/solutions/B www.mywebsite.com/solutions/C www.mywebsite.com/solutions/D/part1 Please note that the website has more pages under the specific section. E.g www.mywebsite.com/solutions/Z www.mywebsite.com/solutions/D/part2 but I only need to isolate the 4 directories (and their own sub-folders) mentioned above. Any idea how I could do this? Thanks a lot Joe
Reporting & Analytics | | Joseph.Volcy0 -
Correlation between google and yahoo indexed pages
My blog ocpatentlawyer.com has about 130 pages or so. Google has indexed most if not all of the posts and pages. In contrast, yahoo has only indexed about 1/4 of the pages and posts. Are there any actions that can be taken based on this information? For example, if i prepare a blog post should I prepare it so that it will most likely be indexed into yahoo knowing that google will also index it. If so, how can i prepare blog posts that will most likely be indexed into yahoo's index?
Reporting & Analytics | | jamesjd70