Is the SEOMoz Rank Tracker still accurate?

[MarkHincks]

I monitor several keywords on several domains and i have found that rank tracker gives me one result yet when searching via Google myself (on different machines) i get a different result.

I've tried several devices on different networks so there is no chance that Google is remembering my searches as such and i ensure that i am always signed out of my account. All devices provide the same results yet Rank Tracker provides a completely different result.

It's as though Rank Tracker is a day ahead or something. Can anyone shed any light for me please?

[eunaneunan]

When checking searches yourself on google add to the end of the url  "&pws=0" (without the quotes) to cancel out you "Personal Word Search"

Personally I have found the tracker to be right 90% of the time and according to this article:

http://blog.greenlightsearch.com/greenlights_search_blog/2011/10/how-much-do-google-rankings-fluctuate-in-a-day.html

8% of ranks can fluctuate in a day.

And if anything the rank tracker would be a day behind, (remember it only checks once a week)

[MarkHincks]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I'm using the manual rank track www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker and despite it saying that the next update is so many days away i check my rankings each day and there is fluctuation on a daily basis, so i'm not quite sure how it works.

[eunaneunan]

I just use the rack checker in the campaigns (which is updated weekly), personally I think checking daily is a bit pointless (but very tempting)

btw when i say use  "&pws=0"  i meant in you address bar eg:

www.google.co.uk/search?q=rankchecker&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a**&pws=0**

[jeffreytrull1]

If you want daily tracking, I would recommend trying a different service like SERP Fox. These will give updated rankings regularly and have many of the same options as the SEO Moz rank tracker.

I haven't seen any issues with tracking ranks in SEO Moz, but I don't check it daily.

[Nick_Sayers]

Hey Mark,

Our apologies that the results weren't as you expected. Unfortunately, this is something of an intractable problem. 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. 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.

Thanks again, and have a great day!

Nick