Rank Tracker Result Not Reflected In Google
-
I'm tracking keyword results in Rank Tracker, but I can't confirm the positions when I do a Google search for the tracked keywords. Does anybody know why RT says the site should be #23, but is not actually in Google?
Is there a way to check Google results from different data centers? If I recall, Google allowed the option to view results from different cities, though I don't know if they still allow this.
-
Hey alrockn,
The search engines - Google, Yahoo! & Bing - all maintain multiple indices that run across multiple datacenters. This means if you query different datacenters, you can get somewhat different ranking results. As others have mentioned, other elements, such as personalization, geography and search history (even if you're logged out of your Google/search engine account) can also influence ranking positions. Hence, there can be a lot of variation in what different people, searching from different computers/locations might see in the rankings.
Our solution has been to run searches from a variety of IP addresses and IP blocks using non-personalized, search history/location agnostic requests. In our experience, these have provided the most accurate results, showing what the "most" users see, though we know there's still quite a bit of room for fluctuation. If you have suggestions about how we might improve the technical process of fetching rankings data to get better data, please let us know and we'll pass it on to our engineering team. We're always looking for ways to get you better data
-
Results are certainly displayed differently for different locations if the query is location-dependent (searching for [hospitals] from Rochester, NY in google.com will get you a very different result from doing the same thing in google.com in Sacramento).
You can change your perceived location in search settings, whether you are logged in or not: http://i.imgur.com/6xgLXAL.png
http://i.imgur.com/e9tuuua.png
Changing my location from its default (based on my IP, which Google actually gets wrong - it thinks I am an hour further south than I actually am) to a location in the north of England changes my results for such a query to reflect where I've said I am: http://i.imgur.com/GqNTKRG.png
I know there's a way to do this in an automated manner if you're building a rank checking tool (my former agency did this), but I'm afraid I don't know how to do this off the top of my head, so you're stuck with the manual option here.
I will assign this question to the Help Team as they will have more information about the IP location Moz's rank tracker crawls from.
Again, not sure what your queries are but they very much could be influenced by geo-location if they are at all dependent on a user's location.
-
If you are searching for something more local, like say a real estate business for a certain town, you are probably going to get better results by searching yourself.
Clear out all of your cookies in your browser, as well as LSOs and all cached site data, then perform your search for each keyword in your browser.
I don't know for sure, but I believe there must be some kind of weighting that goes into where the geo-location of your IP address is so for something local, I have seen it have an impact in what gets displayed in the searches.
-
When searching on Google use: "Hide personal results" so that you properly mimic what moz picks up.
In moz look to see if your ranking are for an image, local or general serp. There should be an associated icon with your rank position.
Lastly, we have found that Moz rank positions are rarely spot on with Google. They can show general trends - you are on or around this rank, but rankings change frequently and Moz updates weekly. There is bound to be a discrepancy.
Yahoo and Bing positions for us are not even close. These sites are less of a concern, but we consistently find huge variations between MOZ reports and the engines results on the day of the MOZ report run. It is not uncommon to find that the MOZ report simply fails to report anything.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
How to rank a transactional query
I have a webpage about bike tours in France with a list of bike tours in France. I imagaine people don't want a big paragraph about what a bike tour in France is because this is a transactional query and not an informational query. How do I go about ranking this page ? Would a good title tag and good description be enough to rank that page ? Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
UPS bought a domain that was blacklisted and now we cant rank in Google
1. We have the site Holidayshuahin.com Apparently Holidayshuahin.com is on a blacklist of barracuda we think this happens when somonelse owned this domain. What does this mean for our Google rankings today? We did not optimise the site for SEO but i think it should still show up somewhere in top 100 as there are not that many pages in the niche. holidays hua hin What should we do change domain name? 2. We have 346 links from Holtidayshuahin.com to our own site Dreamestatehuahinc.om that we do not spend time to optimize on. Dreamestatehuahin.com Is not ranking as good as we expected could this have any thing to about these backlinks from our blacklisted holidayshuahin.com site? Also when so many links, should i make them no follow link, what would be best for the link profile of dreamestatehuahin.com in context of links from holidayhuahin.com Look forward for your answers thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nm19770 -
Why is a poor optimized url ranked first on Google ?
Hi there, I've been working in SEO for more than five years and I'm always telling clients about the more than 200 factors that influence rankings, but sometimes I meet several urls or websites who haven't optimized their pages nor built links and still appear first. This is the case of the keyword "Escorts en Tenerife" in google.es. If you search that keyword in google.es you'll find this url: escortislacanarias.com... (I don't want to give them a link). My question is why the heck this url is ranking first on Google for that keyword if the url isn't optmized, the page content isn't optimized and hasn't got many or valuable incoming links? Do an on page grader to that url regarding that keyword an it gets an F !!! So there is no correlation between better optimization and good rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tintanus0 -
What are the ranking factors for "Google News"? How can we compete?
We have a few sport news websites that are picked up by Google News. Once in a blue moon, one of our articles ranks for a great keyword and shows in one of the 3 listings that Google News has in SERPS. Any tips on how we can we optimise more of our articles to compete in these 3 positions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | betnl0 -
A Keyword Occupied Google Top 7 Ranking. Please Comment........
Hello Everyone, When the whole world is debating on EMD, whether one should use it or avoid. Many bloggers from India still crack a very good traffic from EMD only. Recently, I was researching and found a very impressive link. Keyword: " sad shayari hindi" Google India Search Top 7 position occupied by a single domain with multiple URLs. I would like to request everyone to check the screenshot and comment. VJSQkuy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pushkar630 -
Why Keyword Ranking Fluctuate?
Hi All, I have a shoes website and I am working on it from last four months. I am targeting four main keywords but I have some issues with ranking. First one is that keywords ranking fluctuate many time a day but they remain on the same page. Second one is that these keywords remain on the same page for 2 to 3 week and than suddenly they drop down in the ranking. Please help me regarding these issue. Waiting for replies. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Cuttingseo0 -
Internal page ranking
If I have a domain: Example.com I want this domain to rank for several keywords. I build a page on the domain called Example.com/glasses If I SEO the page Example.com/glasses with backlinks etc... will that URL come up on google or will it simply bring Example.com up on the SERPS. If I have three keywords, should I make a subpage for each page and SEO that page? Will that make the domain rank for all three keywords?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JML11790 -
How to rank for difficult terms
I am helping launch a new business venture that sells oak furniture in the UK. The key product terms are along the lines of; oak bed
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pretige12
oak dining table
oak chairs etc which are very popular search terms. Im used to being able to hang of local or branded search which arent available in this project. The domain is around 12 months old, it has few inbound links which we are working on now with an overseas freelancer (keeping an eye on them). The pages of the site are unique-content rich and the titles and other meta boxes are ticked. What else would the experts recommend?0