SEOMoz Keyword Ranking Accuracy

[VanadiumInteractive]

Getting some mixed message on this.

Is the keyword ranking informational available in SEOMoz based on the data in Mozscape or based on live Google data?

Reason I ask is that my ranking for "crown moulding" for www.worldofmoulding differs:

• Based on the today's scan my www.worldofmoulding.com ranks in position 40 in Google.

• Based on a manual check with cleared out cache no local setting ... the site is 4th spot

• Running a third party check using "Advanced Web Ranking" tool it comes up in 9th spot, but they count the local business SERPs in which case it matches my manual search.

It seems that SEOMoz is not in line with actual ranking.

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Any suggestion for what can be used to accurately asses SERP placement for terms?

[Mike.Goracke]

Hi Jack,

According to Rankings - Help

"Why do the rankings in SEOmoz not match what I see in Google? Great question! Although there is never one “right” ranking for any keyword, SEOmoz tries to represent the ranking results that “most” users will see. If you see wildly different results from your search engine compared to your Ranking Report, it could be because of the following reasons:

• Personalization – Most search engines will personalize your results based on your search history. Make sure you are logged out when performing a search. For Google, try adding &pws=0 to the end of your query string.

  For example, if you searched for “SEO” the URL in Google would look like google.com/search?q=SEO. To turn off personalization, append &pws=0 to the end, so it would look like google.com/search?q=SEO&pws=0.

  

• Geographic Bias – Search engines also customize results based on location. This means users in one city often see very different results than users in another location.

• Latency – Rankings can change between the time we retrieve them and the day when they are viewed.

• “www” vs. non-“www” Subdomains – The Web App is subdomain specific, meaning it only tracks rankings for the specific subdomain you track. So if you enter “example.com” as your subdomain, but “www.subdomain.com” is what ranks in the search results, this ranking won’t appear in your rankings report. This also might indicate a problem with canonicalization or duplicate content.

  If you set your campaign up on the wrong subdomain, the only way to correct it is to start a new campaign. You can either archive or delete your old campaign, or choose to keep it running if you have enough campaign slots available."

And WorldofMoulding.com is coming up at #40 for me when I search "crown moulding" (see screenshot below).

Hope this helps.

Mike

I04eg4m

[VanadiumInteractive]

Thanks Mike;

No matter what I do manually I still get the SERP in 4th place

• I'm logged out of google
• I cleared out all browser data, cache ....

Anything else that I can do to get none biased results?

[Mike.Goracke]

Test it in a different browser.

For instance, I use IE for my main surfing habits, Chrome for my SEO and web development, and Firefox to check my Google rankings.

I do this, because I do my Google-ing in IE - so things get cached, Chrome has me signed in all of the time because of my Google accounts, and Firefox I never use.

Also, I am in Minneapolis, MN, so my browser is using the location to display my results.

I just switched my location to Santa Ana, CA and you are coming up #8.

That is why SEOMoz states in their help, "SEOmoz tries to represent the ranking results that “most” users will see."

Make sense?

Mike

[VanadiumInteractive]

Hey Mike;

That did the trick, the issue was that in the Google menu bar the search tools: was set to Laguna Hills, when i changed that to United States the results move to page 4 ...

thanks again

[Mike.Goracke]

Rock and roll.

Glad you got it all figured out.

Mike

[SiO.no]

The same thing happens to me, and I check my rankings in an inkognito Chrome window. Does anyone know why I am seeing discrepancies?