Webmaster Rankings vs. Moz Rankings

[smithcorona]

Hello all.  For quite some time, both Moz & Ahrefs have indicated to me that I am in first position for several keywords.  However, when I go into my Google Webmaster Tools, it says that I am in 7th or 8th position.

Any idea why there is such a discrepancy?

[davebuts]

Hi smithcorona,

By default, Search Console will display the global average rank of you keywords, while Moz and Ahrefs will show you rankings for a specific country.

If you choose to only look at the average rank of your target country in Search Console, you should see the results are more closely aligned.

Cheers,

David

[effectdigital]

This is true, plus (usually) the average rank displayed in Google Search Console (formerly Google Web-Master Tools) is an 'average' ranking position covering a certain time duration (usually 30 days). Since rankings are transient and flux up and down, if there's a day where your result gets booted (temporarily) lower (or out of Google's top 100), obviously that drastically impacts the 'average' position which has its numbers 'thrown out'.

[smithcorona]

Good call on filtering by target country.  This gets the rankings a little closer to what Moz & Ahrefs are telling me.  Thanks.