For years there was never a reliable way to know for sure what kind of ranking you had overall in Google for any particular keyword due to all the data centers. For a few years now, Google’s webmaster tools would display ranking data for your top 100 keywords in the Top Search Queries area. However, this data was not very accurate as a whole and let me explain how. For example, webmaster tools would say you ranked #4 for the keyword “example.” When you did a search on Google, your site showed up as #2 for you while your friend that lives 100 miles away and uses a different Internet provider, showed your site as #4. This ranking data could only be taken lightly until now. Google recently released a new feature to webmaster tools under the Top Search Queries section that now gives you a lot more data and better insight on your true rankings.
Here are the steps to find out what kind of true organic ranking you have in Google overall across all the data centers.
1. Log into your webmaster tools account. In your Dashboard, click on the “More” link under Top Search Queries.
2. You will then see a list of your top keywords.
3. Click on a particular keyword you want to view the ranking data for. In the screen shot below, you will see that this site ranked for “example” in several positions. They had 9,900 impressions for position 1, 6,600 for 2, 3,600 for 3 and so on. By using this data, that translates into this. 29% of the time this site ranked for the #1 spot, 19% at #2 and 9% at #3. Overall, this site was ranked in the top 3 for almost 60% of the time.
4. You can modify the results by changing the date range and country to your desired choices.
When you compare this data to Google analytics for the number of click-throughs using the same dates, geographical location and keywords, it is obvious that there is a gap in the data but it is more accurate than ever before none the less.
Please share any comments or thoughts you may have. This has been bothering me for years and I was very excited to see this new set of data as it answers the big question!
Curtis Stevens is the founder of Gotmerchant.com, a company that provides a free POS system. They have point of sale systems for restaurants as well as retail stores.
