I'm shocked! KEYWORD SERPs: GA avg. position vs. SEOmoz
-
SEOmoz has us our position for a particular keyword as "Not in Top 50". The same keyword is listed in GA with an average position of. 3.0. What am I missing here?
When I do a search, I most definitely am not seeing us listed as #3 for this keyword, and tend to believe the SEOmoz number, but why is it so wildly different in GA? Should I have hope?
There is another keyword that SEOmoz has us at #4 and it isn't even on the GA list.
Can anyone explain this to me? Many thanks.
-
So glad I could help, Gina! Google definitely marches to the beat of their own proprietary drum. :]
-
Thanks so much for all the time you put into this.
Yep! You confirmed what I thought and are seeing exactly what I've been seeing, what SEOMoz has been telling me and GA is the odd-"person" out on this. It must have to do with the personalized results as you say- which is kind of funny when you think about how and why people use the analytics in the first place. Thanks for the forum link also.
Well.. it's been a sad situation since up until the Fall, we were #3-4 for those keywords for over a decade and I'm losing hope that we'll ever come back on those.
thanks again! - Gina
-
Hey Gina,
I looked into the keywords that you mentioned that you are tracking ( "web design Santa Barbara" & "Santa Barbara web design") and I am not seeing your site anywhere in the top 50 results when I manually check in an incognito window, except in the ppc section. In regard to the keyword containing "in" we only show results for exact matches for the keywords that you are tracking, so we wouldn't include the results for that keyword in the rankings we show. Here are screenshots of the top 50 results for the two keywords that you are tracking where I did a search on the page for your site and only found it in the ppc section:
web design Santa Barbara:
http://screencast.com/t/kQlxP0I5Santa Barbara web design:
http://screencast.com/t/nt8RKJhroCIt does look like the manual searches I did match with what our tool is showing, so investigated a little bit deeper into how Google calculates the average position metric and it looks like they include the personalized results, which we do not. Our tool shows what most users would see when doing a search for the keyword and, since you are viewing the average position section while signed into your account, that could certainly add bias to the position GA is showing. Here is a forum post from stackexchange.com that talks more about that metric: http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/826/what-does-avg-position-from-google-webmaster-really-mean
I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.
-Chiaryn
-
HI Chiaryn,
So sorry! I always feel a little weird posting my URL in the forum, but here goes.
http://www.fateyes.com - the campaigns are set up as www.fateyes.com. I recall being unsure as to how I should do that when I set them up...
Keywords: "w.web design Santa Barbara" & "Santa Barbara web design". The "in" phrase is "web design in Santa Barbara"
The local listing thing is not something that has been showing in my campaigns and now I know why. Truthfully, I had never done a search with "in" before so hadn't even known I had that particular listing going for us. No prob that it's not in SEOMoz reports.
Thanks again.
-
Hi Gina,
Thanks for writing in. It is a bit difficult to answer this question without knowing what the keyword is and the site that you are comparing to the keyword, but there are a few reasons this may happen. First, it can depend on how the campaign is set up. For example, if you set up the campaign for www.example.com, but example.com (without the www in the URL) is actually what is ranking, we will show that the site is not in the top 50 because the campaign is only looking for URLs in the rankings containing www in front of your domain name.
Also, you mention local listings, which are not considered organic rankings so, even if you are the #1 places result for a keyword, we will not count that as within the top 50 but that we will label as a universal result.
If you can provide me with the specific keyword and website that you are having this issue with, I can look into it more directly. If you prefer to keep that information private, you can send it ti [email protected] with Attn: Chiaryn in the subject line.
Thanks,
Chiaryn
-
as much as they claim to ignore things like in within actually search they don't in semantic search because it could be quite important.
I would suggest for now keeping an eye on it, thats assuming its only the one keyword/phrase dropping?
-
Hi Andy,
Thanks for your reply.
It's an exact match four word phrase: service type+location. And my position dropped for that phrase and its reverse (location+service) and has been reflected by SEOMoz since it happened, on December 28, 2012. That was a final drop- it had started dropping in Oct. So I guess it could be the 90 day thing.
There is a "like" term with one additonal word: service type + location with the word "in" between them and for this one we are #4 and I can see it. It's the local listings with map pins etc.
-
it's possible that GA, being as it is, doesn't give whole information and is aggregate info - for example if you look on GWT about what your website keywords are it talks about variants of words and not exact words. It is possible therefore it does the same in GA and one of the "like" keyterms does rank at 3 or 4... it's also possible that the data is upto 90 days out of date on GA. Both of these can and do effect both Moz and GA
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
-
Does Live Chat affect SERPS
For the last week we have hosted Live Chat on www.freedomltd.com desktop and tablet. The latest MOZ ranking reports shows 4 increase, 86 decrease and 170 unchanged keywords. Could Live Chat have anything to do with this?
Moz Pro | | henandstag0 -
Getting my top keywords separated out in SEOmoz reports
I am using the standard functionality to produce weekly Moz reports. There does not seem to be a setting to show rankings of my most important keywords. It would be nice to have those high-level keywords on the first page. For example, I have 200 keywords in an account. I want the report to show on a page my 10 most important keywords. Is there a way to set up a Label to my keywords in order to product a report page just for those keywords?
Moz Pro | | clicktoshop0 -
Noob question about keyword research
I have a client that does commercial building renovations. I looked at a lot of their competitors and did some googling to see what words people were using. Some terms such as commercial fit-outs, didn't really have any search volume. I did pick out some that had some volume, Google KW Tool said anywhere from 46 local searches for something like "commercial construction contractors" to 320 for "commercial construction companies". However, no data really shows up for local specifics like "commercial construction companies philadelphia". I tried looking at competitors in the Moz site explorer, but not too many were doing much link building to look at anchor text. Question 1) When it says "local monthly searches", is it defaulting to MY local area based on my google info? So if im in Philly area that local area is whats displaying? Question 2) I tried to run the same keyword list I pulled from Adwords tool through Moz KW tool, and it tells me some of the terms don't have ANY traffic! So know I am real confused as to whether the KW's i picked are good or crap! I attached image of the stuff. CnYyNb3
Moz Pro | | satoridesign0 -
Not provided Data in SEOMoz reports
Hi How do SeoMoz reports deal with 'not provided' data I see my total visits from organic search for a month are same as total of both my branded and non branded keyword traffic combined yet GA is reporting 157 visits from non provided data so is SEOMoz being very clever and finding a way to decipher this not provided data and allocate it accordingly in the reports ? Or if not what ? Many Thanks Dan
Moz Pro | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
How do you guys/gals define a 'row?'
I have a question about calls to the API and how these are measured. I noticed that the URL Metrics calls allow a batch of multiple URLs. We're in a position where we need link data for multiple websites; can we request a single row of data with link information for multiple URLs, or do we need to request a unique row for each URL?
Moz Pro | | ssimburg0 -
Keyword research & how it's relevant to my site.
How do I know if I can compete on a particular keyword. Say the keyword analysis tool shows the keyword difficulty is 59%. How do I know what 59% means to my site, other than checking domain and page authority relative to my site (i.e. if sites in the top 10 are higher or lower authority than my site). Is there a way of showing what keyword difficulty percentage is a cut off point for my site? Thanks, Dan
Moz Pro | | dcostigan0 -
SEOMoz Campaign Tool
I've noticed that when looking at the SEOmoz tool, specifically the On Page analysis tool, it is still looking at an old url. About two months ago I made updates to all of our category page URLs. Previously the old urls were stuffed with keywords, strange characters and were really long. When looking at the on-page tool though it is referencing the old urls for keywords and I'm wondering why? I figure its been long enough to recognize the new urls. Is the paring of a keyword and a url saved and just graded on a weekly basis to produce the report? I had expected to see the new url's by now which are also represented in the sitemap. Around that same time I also added our TellAFriend Page and Review pages to our Robots.txt file as not to be crawled but I still see these pages come up in the errors report. Should this update as well?
Moz Pro | | dgmiles0 -
Is there a way to see all SEOMoz questions, comments, posts, responses that I've given a "thumbs up" to?
Lots of times I'll Thumbs Up a question, blog post or response not only if I think it's high quality but if I think I'd like to revisit it in the future. Essentially, I want to use a the SEO Moz Thumbs Up as a bookmark. Is there any way to see all the SEO Moz content that I have given a "Thumbs Up" to? I know I can review all the questions I've asked or answered in the "My Q&A" page. Perhaps, I'm just missing a "Thumbs Up" page somewhere on my profile?
Moz Pro | | TaitLarson2