3 monitoring tools are giving me the simular SERP ranking position but manual searching and traffic are telling me something different. What gives?
-
I have looked up SERP position in 4 different tools, 3 out of the 4 (Raven, SEO Moz, and Google webmaster tools) are telling me that the site is ranking in the 90s range. When I manually search for the term (when I'm logged out), the site lists on the 1st pages. I also see it listed as the #9 spot when I use SEO Books Rank Checker. Last month, Google webmaster says that the term got us 200 impressions. Has anyone seen this before?
Thanks
-
Hi Theresa.
There's an easy way to remove personalized search results. Just add &pws=0 to the end of the search url.
More info:
-
Thank you! This will be very helpful to send along to our client.
-
Hi
It can be quite frustrating and very disappointing when you realise that your page 1 keyword position is due to you being logged in and when you log out it drops though a hole in the floor. It's clear you know how to log out...
Recently, we have subscribed to rank tracker from link-assistant tools. It does appear to be very accurate, and will give you a graph of your serps vs competitor...
-
Here's a screen cap. Interestingly, I switched to a few different cities in my Google options, (signed out for all of them) and the top results all remained the same. This tells me there's less "local" correlation for these sites than there is strong non localized SEO factors.
-
Can you do me a favor and google the term "corporate video production" and send me a screen shot of the top 10 search results? Or just send the names of the sites in the top 10 search results.
Thanks so much for your help!
-
Unfortunately, even when someone is logged out, Google still shows personalized results. Not based on as much search history as when logged in, yet enough that it's not 100% guaranteed that what you see is what someone else will see. While they don't reveal what the methods are for doing this, possibilities include
- Personal access info (your internet connection IP address)
- location data based on your internet service providers recorded location (the nearest access point to your connection)
- Cookies stored on your browser
- Which Google data center your connection pipes into. As the index is updated, it's not instant across all data centers.
Individual tools will provide different information as well, depending on the method they use to query Google.
A very important concept is to understand that any data you obtain for a web site is, at best, useful mostly for observing trends, rather than trusting it's complete accuracy.
-
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for your response. My browsing history was cleared and I still saw my client's website showing up in the top 10 search results. SEO Book's Rank Checker Tool also produced the same ranking as my manual search.
-
Hi Theresa,
Did you clear your browsing history before you did the manual search? Your browser may be saving the site because you've already visited it. To go from the 90's to first page in your results is probably the browser.
Best Regards,
Daniel
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
-
Target Search Terms Changed - does this affect traffic?
We spent the last 12 months targeting a particular search term (mortgage broker) and have been ranking well for it consistently for about 6 months now. We have decided to change the target search term to something else (insurance broker) but noticed that our traffic has started to decline since we started doing this. We are still ranking well for the initial search term, and our ranking is slowly improving for the new targeted search term in SERPs but traffic is down about 60% from January. Is it normal/expected for this to happen?
Keyword Research | | monique-plaw1 -
Different audiences with same keywords
**How do wedding venue owners Google for a "restroom trailer rental" different than someone who is planning out their own event? I want to give venues an exclusive offer. Any tips on how they search for it different than regular users? **
Keyword Research | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Medical terms and keyword monthly search ranges
I have a question with regards to the monthly search ranges. I read your information on how the range is calculated but it does not explain the following. Google AU comparison for "hives" and "urticaria". The range give is 11.5-30.3K per month for both terms. This is highly unusual because we know that people use hives more than urticaria when searching for the same disease. Interesting this is the only medical term that behaves like this and want to understand the reason why.
Keyword Research | | niritoli0 -
I understand it's been asked before, however moz staff is telling me keyword's capitalization is treated as a separate keyword.
So there I was looking through my rankings like every other day, when I see a lowercase and uppercase version of a keyword. Most times I see this, I see them with the same rankings, and even researched this about 5 months ago, when I came to the conclusion that google treats them the same way. However, this day I saw them as different ranks, same keyword, only capitalized 1st letter of the 2 word keyword. I asked moz staff about this, as I felt it was an error. But was met with the answer that google does indeed treat these keywords differently. My line of thought was that the rank checker didn't check both the lowercase and uppercase keyword at the same time, and SERPs happened to change when the second word was checked for rank, returning a different rank. So now, I am in doubt again, as to uppercase and lowercase keywords being different or the same in google's eyes? I honestly don't know why a uppercase keyword would have different motive from searcher than a lowercase when many time not, searchers can't even spell the keyword correctly.
Keyword Research | | Deacyde0 -
Why do my keyword ranking differ from the results on Google ?
I've been working on a specific campaign for a couple of days, and been noticing that my keyword ranking is much different on my campaign than in reality. I tried my keyword on Google (with the same settings I have on my campaign) and my keyword ranks at #5 instead of not in 50, as indicated on my campaign. Can someone give me a hint on this issue ? Thank you !
Keyword Research | | marketingmedia.ca0 -
Is there any way to track search volume for a particular keyword on a day-to-day basis?
My boss has asked me to track the number of searches for a keyword (a particular company's name) on a daily basis this week to see how the volume fluctuates from day to day. Is this even possible? I should note that his request does not involve an active SEO or AdWords campaign. In fact, the company my boss is interested in doesn't even have a website at the moment. Thanks in advance – either for helping me confirm that it's impossible to track keyword search volume on a day-to-day basis, or for showing me the magical way to actually do this.
Keyword Research | | matt-145670 -
Bulk keyword competition tool?
The SEOmoz Keyword Difficulty tool is great, but the 5 keyword limit is too small. I need a tool that will allow checking the organic competition level of 100's of keywords (to help in selecting blog topics). Anyone know of such a tool?
Keyword Research | | AdamThompson1 -
What is the relationship/difference between categories and keywords in terms of google local seo?
I know that they are very similar as search signals, but I would like to understand the exact relationship. My company is in the process of adding local seo services to our seo offerings, and we are trying to hammer out a process for determining optimal categories for businesses based on keywords we are already using for optimizing their sites. Any insights or suggestions on how best to do this would be much appreciated.
Keyword Research | | CustomCreatives0