Keyword Ranking Report is Different than Real Result on Google

[KanikaG]

Hi Guys,
I am getting MOZ reports on a few keywords and that is good But when My client search for the same keywords he doesn't get the same rank, not even on that page.

Let me explain in more details:
I have a keyword that shows on rank #5 in Google Mobile for a Local location for the current week. The client is from the same location as well. But when client search for that keyword from his mobile he doesn't get the keyword listed on that page, not even on other pages. I checked with other online keyword rank checker tool and all are showing the result similar to the Moz ranking report. It's really frustrating for my client.

Google analytics shows that mobile users and organic reach are increasing so I am sure MOZ and other tools are showing us correct result.

What could be the possible reason that he is not getting the same result as showing by MOZ?

I am not from his location so how can I check the keyword result for the selected city using MOZ that is accurate?

Any help would be highly appreciated.

Please help.

Thanks

[NgEF]

Hi KanikaG,

The difference in rankings can be due to several different reasons. Moz's crawlers are pretty accurate in my experience but I've usually got to make sure that the settings are correct.

How is your client checking the rankings? If the client is simply opening up a browser tab and Googling the keywords for example. they might get an inaccurate ranking, especially if they've visited competing sites before. The reason for this is simply their search/browser history. If they visited a site before, even more so if they searched for a keyword then clicked into the competing site. The best way to get a 'clean' read on the rankings is to simply open up an incognito window (if they're using Chrome), or a new private window (for Firefox). That way, their cookies/browsing history/previous queries don't influence what they are seeing in the search result pages.

Hope this helps!

[KanikaG]

Thanks NgEF for your quick response. I've advised him to clean the cache and see the rankings in Incognito mode and with location set to local. I hope it will help him to get the exact ranking that MOZ is showig to us.

THanks

[dave.kudera]

Hey!  Dave from the Help Team here,

Most discrepancies in keyword rankings are caused by the way Moz is querying Google and other search engines. Our process completely strips personalization from the query. This means that it's more representative of a national average for all searchers in the country, but it also means that you may not be able to reproduce these exact SERPs within your browser because your location is factored into your search results.

One of the SEO experts in our community offered a really great explanation of this difference here.

If you are seeing some big discrepancies that don't seem to make sense to you, please shoot us an email at help@moz.com with some examples, we would be happy to take a look for you!

thanks