Google Webmaster Tool accurate?

[Casinorep]

It's strange that the query section indicates my site is ranked for certain keywords and even show the average positions where it's listed. But when I do a search on those keywords and flip to those pages, I don't see my site anywhere.

Anyone have an explanation for this?

[Renee]

Are you looking in the right place?

Remember that depending on your location, google will show different results.

[RayUK]

What Renee said, plus Google has this 'personalized search' thing now where it adjusts the SERPs you see depending on what you have searched for (and clicked through on) before. It stores it in cookies and associates it with your Google login. But it also does it for not-logged-in searching too. If you want to see the SERPs without any of their adjustments you can go through an anonymizing proxy.

It is a bit of a pain really, as obviously gambling webmasters will be doing a fair few gambling type searches, so that skews the results that Google gives us! If anyone here has a better way of stopping this personalized search thing than going through a proxy I would love to hear it, so do chime in!

[shortow]

Casino rep,
there's a drop down at the top of this report that lets you select results by country. Choose yours and you might see slightly closer results - still won't account for customized search etc but will be closer.

This is an awesome tool, but I also question its accuracy. I find a significant discrepancy in clicks here versus Google Analytics

[Metaxa]

Do a search on Google and you see "web history" on the top right. (It only appears once you have done a search). Click on it and disable "customizations based on search activity".

That's another feature Google enforce on the user.

Check after a while if it's still disabled, Google activates the feature from time to time!!! Also after you clean your cookies, you need to disable it again.

[RayUK]

Do a search on Google and you see "web history" on the top right. (It only appears once you have done a search). Click on it and disable "customizations based on search activity".

That's another feature Google enforce on the user.

Check after a while if it's still disabled, Google activates the feature from time to time!!! Also after you clean your cookies, you need to disable it again.

That is interesting! I didn't see it on my search page, top right or anywhere else. So I googled 'web history in google search' and clicked on it - it asked me to sign in and it turns out that it is disabled on my Google login (the one I use most of the time and am nearly always logged in to). I guess I must have disabled it at some point or it was never enabled for me?

Anyway I left it disabled and am now experimenting with proxies to see if it still makes a difference - I am sure I have seen a difference in the past but now I can't reproduce what I remember seeing.

Thank you for that tip though I know where to look and fiddle in the future if it does get turned on.

[dhayman]

Don't take anything that GWT states as absolute fact. The #'s change frequently, and there are always some major oddities with the statistics. After all of these years, you would think that they'd have their act together - but they don't. Yahoo's command line statistics are much, much, much more accurate, IMO - they just don't offer the breadth of statistics that Google offers - it's just that Google's stats aren't 100 % reliable.

[webber286]

This is an awesome tool, but I also question its accuracy. I find a significant discrepancy in clicks here versus Google Analytics

It seems the Webmaster Tools rounds their numbers as all of my search positions end in a zero. But, for the one keyword I looked up, they were very close to what Analytics reports (inside of 10% anyway).

[Nandakishore]

This is an awesome tool, but I also question its accuracy. I find a significant discrepancy in clicks here versus Google Analytics

I agree.

[Nandakishore]

Do a search on Google and you see "web history" on the top right. (It only appears once you have done a search). Click on it and disable "customizations based on search activity".

That's another feature Google enforce on the user.

When I click on "web history" after a search, I don't see any button to disable "customizations based on search activity".

[Nandakishore]

I use the tool Rank Tracker regularly for checking SERP values. What I don't undertand is the fluctuation of the google rank value (Yahoo and Bing are more conistent). For example, I get for the keyword 'jackpot guide' google ranking between 3 and 10 over the last 7 or 8 months. But, all of a sudden the value plunges to 147 for just 1 day or even is out of top 200 for one day. Of course, I did not do any changes to the url before the fluctuation happened. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

[bradz21]

I use digital point keyword tracker for a few terms and noticed the same trend with google from time to time. It looks to me almost that the sites are dropped and no longer ranks for certain keywords, just for a short period of time. Then within a day or so the rankings are back.

[webber286]

Just a guess, but it may have to do with Google using a different data center on the day that you notice the drop. Google has several datacenters they roll through when displaying SERPs, so you may be higher or lower depending on which datacenter is serving the results when you check.

[Simmo!]

Google geo-targets results to a user's location, so it's almost impossible to see exactly the order of results someone in another country is seeing as far as I am aware. If you live in the UK and you search in Google.com for example, you will see results skewed towards the UK.

There may be a way round this, but no idea what.

[Casinorep]

Well I currently have the settings to "all countries". And it shows that I'm ranked at #140 for "online casino". And when I do a google search specifically from that country and flip to that page, my site is nowhere to be found. This is still boggling.

[Nandakishore]

I think Webber286 is right that a lot depends on the data center used by google on the day when one is checking a serp position. I wish we could know a little bit more about this mystery from some of the SERP experts we have here.

[universal4]

Don't forget that you will tend to see sites you click on move up in your own searches.

As an example, (I have tested this a few times) if you have a page that is on page 2 for a specific search, and you search for it every day and make sure that is the only page you click in that search, after a week (sometimes shorter or longer periods) that page will move to page 1.

However, that does NOT mean it will move to page 1 overall, but it will move up in YOUR searches.

I also agree that depending onb what data center returns the results can also affect positioning of some searches.

Rick
Universal4

[Simmo!]

Actually there is a back-door into regional searches. Use the Adwords Ad-Targetting Keyword Tool, enter the country and you suposedly get the results in SERPs that that country sees, although data-centers will vary that from time to time when updates are being rolled out of course.

https://adwords.google.com/select/Ad...ingPreviewTool ( I think I read that Google are due to move this from the public areas into the Adwords area soon though, but stll free in there obviously)

[faraz786g]

I use digital point keyword tracker for a few terms and noticed the same trend with google from time to time. It looks to me almost that the sites are dropped and no longer ranks for certain keywords, just for a short period of time. Then within a day or so the rankings are back.

does digital point have any such tool i would love to try it. Google web tool is also pretty good not very accurate but give us a very good idea.

[alexcruncha]

In my experience of constantly checking stats Google results vary a lot anyway. I have had my site ranked #1 for a key search term then it would disappear to the third page the following day then back to the first page a few days later.. all from the same PC with the same IP and same Google account.

My guess is that there are clusters of servers that all have their own crawlers that sync periodically.. but this is Google black box stuff I guess.

...to answer your question I see Google Webmaster Tools as being accurate but the data never seems to be up to date. I find that it can often be a few days behind if not a week.