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Right I hope it's a bug from GSC, since all the rank tracker and our own testing couldn't agree with what the GSC reports.  A related question - assuming that the average position reported by GSC is not correct in this case, how much should I trust the #impressions and #clicks data?

Thank you. Did you see it fluctuates on rank trackers as well or was it just GSC?

Thank you for the info! The GSC does look quite reasonable for many other keywords I am examing and is consistent with rank trackers. But for this particular keyword, it has been reporting fluctuation since 2 months ago, and we couldn't figure out why. The graph image shall at most affect the rank number by 1 or 2 at most - which doesn't explain the huge fluctuation. 

I have a guess - would it be possible that, because of the BERT update, GSC converts some long-tail keywords into this short-term keyword, and if our page's rank is low for that long tail, the reported average rank is affected?

Hi,

I'm seeing a huge rank fluctuation reported by GSC (all rank trackers reported stable rank) for one of our pages, one particular keyword, in one particular country (US), and only Desktop (not Mobile). Is anyone else encountering a similar case?

More details:

1. huge rank fluctuation reported by GSC in the US, stable in other countries (since Oct 7th)

2. all rank tracking service reported stable top rank in US cities (as well as our own friend's testing across the country)

3. only happen to 1 keyword and its close variation (other keywords that the page also ranks for are quite stable)

4. only observed fluctuation for Desktop, while Mobile is stable

5. in those low-ranked days, the average CTR is only slightly lower than normal days

Does anyone have any idea what could this be?  Should I trust GSC's fluctuation or the rank tracking service's stable top rank?

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