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    Ranking Inaccuracies
    • 25 Jul 2024
    • 2 Minutes to read
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    Ranking Inaccuracies

    • Updated on 25 Jul 2024
    • 2 Minutes to read
    • Contributors
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    Article summary

    Ranking Inaccuracies

    Learn why you could be seeing what looks like an inaccuracy and what you can do to troubleshoot and verify it.

    If you believe that you are getting inaccurate results, kindly follow the troubleshooting steps at the end of this article. But first, let’s understand how rank tracking works and where the data is stored.

    Data are stored in multiple Google Data Centers around the world. When you do a manual search, you get randomly assigned to one data center and you are going to get the results from that data center.

    One data center's results can be slightly different from others because the syncing process often takes time, and some data centers can have more updated data. So there’s a good chance that people are going to see different results based on which data center they are connected to and some other factors.

    Factors that influence keyword ranking results:

    • Personalized results - Google tracks the type of results you tend to click and open. This is why we advise that you are logged out of your Google account or use private browsing or incognito mode when performing a manual search to check.

    • Location/IP address - Google tailors search results according to the location from which the search is being performed. For example, keywords like “dentist” often have a local intent so doing a search on this keyword would give you different results depending on where it is searched from.

    • The device used - You will see different results depending on your device. For example, the results of a keyword searched on a desktop will differ when that same keyword is searched on mobile.

    • Google data centers synchronization - As mentioned earlier, this can take time to balance out, leading to the keywords bouncing around from rank to rank.

    • Time - This is one obvious reason. One day, a certain keyword/domain may be ranking, and the following day, it may not.

    • Other factors

    Troubleshooting Steps:

    1. Refresh the keyword to bring in the most up-to-date ranking.

    2. Verify the rankings using the Spyglass tool and go through the debugger by clicking "Having issues with this Keyword?" to verify that all your keyword settings are correct.
      The Spyglass tool gives you a copy of the search results we found when performing the query. This can be used to verify the rankings you are getting on Rank Tracker. If the ranking you see from the Spyglass tool is different from the rankings you got through a manual search, please go ahead and move on to step 3.

    3. If you have performed a manual search, please ensure that the URL on your manual search results matches the URL being tracked in the Rank Tracker.

    We perform a regional broad search, if you are tracking Google.co.uk but you are performing a manual search from a specific city like "Brighton, United Kingdom", you might not see the same results as us. The location you search from should be the same as the location you're tracking.

    If, after taking these steps, your manual search results are different from ours, then it is likely because Google has different data centers that often take time to sync up their rankings, leading to a bouncing around of the keywords from rank to rank on each search.

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