Webmaster Tools...do they lie?

Please SEO experts, help!?!

onorinstorage,

Sometimes I field this question (or similar question) and the person asking it is wondering why there is a big difference between how they see their site ranking and what Google WMT's is saying.

1) Make sure your search history is disabled
2) Log out of your Gmail account when checking rankings

How do you check rankings? Is it with a tool or are you doing it by hand? Google will show you personalized results, your site will rank much higher than it actually does because you clicked on it in the past, and to stop that from happening you may need to tell Google to stop it. If you have already done this then it might be that one data center has updated the ranking before yours has, or vice versa.

They're not saying "it should be" ranking at 39. They are saying when it IS seen in the SERPs, it is seen on average around position 39.

Google is doing so much personalization of search results now that it is hard to tell where you really rank. They have always shuffled the results, showing things on page 1 from time to time even though they should never legitimately rank there. Then the very next search it might not show up at all.

Now they are tracking which URLs you're seeing in the SERPs, which you are clicking on, which you are not, how long you spend on a page after clicking on the SERP entry before bouncing back to Google, etc. They are using all of this data to constantly modify your SERPs for subsequent searches.

So they are simply indicating that the few people who are seeing your entry for that keyword phrase on average have to click through to the 4th page of the SERPs for that keyword phrase to find it. It doesn't mean that anyone clicking through to the 4th page is likely to see it. They may only occasionally bump the entry up to the 4th page through personalization. 99% of the time it might appear on page 100 and never be seen. But the 1% of the time that it is seen, on average it's around position 39.

Even for me It shows as that I have 30 backlinks , but back link watch shows as I have 65 (which is correct ). When I checked after few weeks the no of links has reduced.

Well keep in mind webmaster tools covers different localities and countries, and personalizes results. Also, results can flip around too, but I would say it is probably at least near accurate.

The data google shows is average position and not exact position your position might fluctuate according to the country from which the search is done and the data center of google in which search is done.

What Country is it reporting your site at #39?

Change the duration to the last couple of days available and check if it is still available.

The website for my Mobile Shelving microsite has been indexed again by the Googlebot however it's still not showing up!

Even though Webmaster Tools say Avg.Position 36 for the keyword "mobile shelving"

Does anyone know what's going on? All my other websites/keywords roughly match up from webmaster tools to google.co.uk so I can't work out why just this one isn't working???

Someone must be able to answer this/help!?!

I'll let you in on a little secret about those Webmaster Tools numbers - broad match searches can skew the numbers - and it goes across all properties (news, blog, image, etc). I have compared long-term results of two- and three-word SERPs with the Webmaster Tools, and I am convinced that three-word SERPs are affecting calculations.

And remember, your site may could rank high in rank high in image search - or rank high in one country or another. Since you are ranking high in several three-word searches (like archive mobile shelving) I think you are probably doing well.

Webmaster tools are a trailing average, not all that accurate, and you really do need to filter by search type and country (top drop-downs) - but remember this is all past performance, not current performance.

What time frame are you looking at in WMT? As mentioned above, the displayed results are trailing. Your site might no longer be there. Change the time frame to the last day or 2 and see what it says. If the date is a while ago then you will need to check it next week. The impressions will be very low for #39 so the results will be skewed. You can check in the graph for the last day you got an impression at #39.

I'm now even more confused!

If I change the Country to UK, Type to Web, and change the date to say the last week I'm meant to be ranked 16 for keyword mobile shelving???

Someone seen this before?

Your site still may have dropped since then. A site can be pushed to the top for only hours.

How many impressions is it getting at #16? That will tell you if the site has been there for a while or not. It only has to appear once at #16 to be shown in the list.

Are you getting any referrals from the search?

One of my sites was in 6th position for almost a month (the first month). After that, a "dance" bring me to 500. Right now webmaster tools shows that the average position for my main keyword is 40. It's that simple.

If your site is new, that is probably what happen to you.