Discrepancy in keyword ranking from webmasters and actual ranking.

[seomoz1232]

I have been tracking ranks of some keywords important to my business since the last 2 months. Recently I have observed that, for one of my keywords, google webmasters is giving the avg position as 8 but when i search in google it comes in the 6th page. I know that webmasters tools gives the average position but i do not think there will be such big difference in the ranks. Please help.Thanks.

[MickEdwards]

Webmaster Tools gives a retrospective indication of ranking and is not fresh.  You could use a tool such as CuteRank or there is Firefox extension you can track with.

Regarding your ranking, if the page is new you might find the ranking bounces around quite a bit.

[DougRoberts]

The position your page ranks at isn't fixed. It can depend on a lot of factors such as personalisation and geographical location of the searcher (local and international), search history and of course any changes during the time period.

You can add filters in Webmaster tools to just look at one country. (I've got one keyword that I'm ranking an average position of 4 in the UK and an average position of 16 in the US for example. The US market is a lot more competitive.).

If you click on the keyword in Webmaster Tools, you'll see the ranking page and a bit more of a breakdown of the positions you appeared at.

All this makes it difficult/impossible to use ranking position as a metric when you're trying to report the success of your campaign to your client.

But really, rankings shouldn't really matter to them - more organic traffic that's converting (more $$$!) is better.

[seomoz1232]

Thanks Mck and Dough.