A significant part of working on a website is about getting it to the top ranks of the SERPs so you can be found by your potential audience. Rank trackers illustrate your site’s performance over time. They help you refine your SEO strategies, and understand how each change you make to the site reflects on its overall performance.
This is why website owners pay great attention to rankings, selecting the most accurate rank tracking tools with care and also carrying out manual checks. This is where an issue can arise as the positions shown by the ranking tool and by a manual check can vary. The difference between the two can be insignificant, but it can also be ‘off’ by quite a few positions.
So what causes this mismatch, and how can you get the right tracking information for your website pages? Let’s review!
Location variation
Google aims to return the best possible results that are most relevant to you. When you search for something on Google, the results it displays factor in many variables - one being your location. So the results of your manual search will be dependent on your location, and this is visible even in incognito mode in your browser.
The big advantage of rank tracking tools, apart from being able to work at scale, is that you can choose from which location to check positions, meaning you will be able to analyze your market position for different target audiences. If your manual location check and your rank tracker location are different this will affect the results.
Search history
Another parameter Google uses when it comes to tailoring the search results is your internet activity. Google uses this approach to personalize the user browsing experience. It tracks the websites that you commonly use, your browsing history, your engagement metrics and more, to bring you the results that it determines are most relevant for you. So, if you visit your website regularly, it will show higher in your search results.
Google gets a large amount of information about your usage through your Google account and uses that data to bring you personalized results. A rank tracker's non-personalized search on the same term will deliver different results.
Mobile or desktop?
In 2018 52.2% of internet usage was through a mobile device. It’s no secret that mobile devices are being used increasingly for media consumption, overtaking desktops.
Google has accordingly made changes in the way it organizes its SERP results, depending on the device being used. If you do a search on mobile, Google will prioritize mobile-friendly sites to ensure a better browsing experience. And if you’re using a desktop for Google searches, then the search engine gives preference to desktop-optimized websites.
Source: StatCounter
Rank trackers will show both desktop and mobile results. This can inform your website SEO work and also feed into considerations of how your audience mainly finds you.
Search filters
Google search filters allow users to customize or filter searches through a series of options. It’s a great way to make your search as precise as possible. What is also true is that each filter will have an impact on the SERPs, each setting counts.
Rank trackers don’t use any specific settings in searches. They do a neutral ‘“out of the box” search, and so the results won’t be the same as any searches you do which may have filters you’ve previously set applied.
The search engine of choice
Although Google dominates, with around 92% of the worldwide market share, other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, Baidu and so on are used by searchers worldwide. These search engines will all have their own specific criteria when it comes to rankings and you’re unlikely to see the same results in all cases.
Source: StatCounter
Rank trackers will interrogate multiple search engines and provide you with the different results in each case.
Time lag between manual checks and rank trackers
Google results are dynamic and time is certainly a factor when it comes to discrepancies in the SERPs. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to time your manual check exactly in line with your rank tracker, and so there are likely to have been fluctuations and changes which will affect the positions you see.
Typos!
This might feel insignificant, but yes, we can all make mistakes. Typos are human errors and they can really mess up the ranking order, so make sure you double check the terms that you’re using both for manual searches and in your rank tracker.
What you can do to get “objective” search engine results
It’s not really possible to get 100% truly objective information on positions, due to search engine personalization, volatility and fluctuation of results.
These factors, along with time lag issues also mean there are likely to be discrepancies between ranking tools and manual checks. However, there are some steps you can take to minimize these, even if they can’t be fully eliminated.
Go incognito
Much of the discrepancy in results is due to Google personalization. By using the incognito mode on your browser, your user information won’t be saved so you’ll get a more “neutral” result. Most popular browsers have an incognito mode that users can activate right from the menu or via settings.
Clear all your browser data
Browser data is all the information that the browser collects from your internet activity. It includes a list of all the websites you visited and the cookies received from them, and the cache data collected over that time. The data gives Google an insight into your online preferences so it can provide quicker and more relevant results. Clearing your cache and cookies will eliminate much of the information which goes into personalizing your results.
Oh, and don’t forget to log out of your Google account!
Align your rank tracker settings
Another way to get around the disparity between manual searches and the results shown by rank trackers is align your rank tracker settings. Ranking tools allow you to set various options such as location, language or device used. Configure these to match your typical search pattern as closely as possible.
While it won’t be possible to eliminate discrepancies totally due to the way search engines work, understanding the causes of the variation and taking steps to minimize these as far as possible will help you get the most useful ranking results for your site.
