Why did the crawl last night not show the same results i see in google?

[tom14cat14]

Last night my keywords were crawled and it shows me that a key word is ranked 14. For 3 days now it has been rank 4 or 5. Is there a reason this is not accurate? I have not checked the rest of my keywords so i am not sure about those. Thanks

[SimonCullum]

Hi There, Lots of reasons, including: Webpages are crawled, not keywords. If your pages have changed, the keywords the pages rank for could also have changed. Google make over 500 algorithm changes a year, rankings are constantly changing for many many different keywords. Personalised search may be showing you different results to what you saw before, as can location changes and browser caching. Perhaps the inbound links to your site have been devalued, which in turn can lower your rankings. I'd suggest performing an on-page analysis to help identify any page errors that you may have. Check out the inbound links to your website for anything dubious. There are plenty of other tools to use, SEOmoz has a great set that you could find useful. Hope that helps, Regards Simon

[KeriMorgret]

The most common reason for this type of difference in rankings is that you are using personalized search; that Google is personalizing you search based on your prior search history, any information if you are logged in, etc. I usually go to Safari to the edit -> reset Safari option which resets Safari to like it was just freshly installed with no cookies, no browsing history, no cache, etc. and check my rankings that way.

[tom14cat14]

I have had a few friends that have searched from different states and they come up with the same as me.

[SimonCullum]

That was a good test. Then chances are your default natural rankings have gone down. If it's not personal search causing it then, look at some some of my other suggestions above. It's likely to be a number of different factors which some research and corresponding changes to your site could do the trick