WebPosition Gold vs. HitsLink results

I'm confused about the variance

[Christi]

Friends, thank you for this forum, where I've learned a lot in the last week.

Can anyone help me understand why, when I run WebPosition Gold for a certain keyword, I get "Not found in first 30" or three pages, whatever. Not found.

But my HitsLink logs are showing more traffic than ever coming in on exactly that keyword, and through exactly the search engines I tracked on WebPosition.

Many thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Christi

[Mardi_Gras]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Christi. Have you tried a manual search on those engines with your KW to see what kind of results you get?

[Christi]

Mardi_Gras, yes I did manual searches and was not happy with the results, which mirrored WebPosition's. The numbers coming in from HitsLink, however, seem high for a listing way down in the search engines.

Christi

[fathom]

Hi Christi & welcome to WebmasterWorld.

A few possiblilities:

1. The keyphrase is so popular that people are search deeper than 30 ranked positions (not too often but can occur). (I have some terms at rank 50 producing 50 queries a day).

2. Search engines know that an agent (like WPG) rather than a browser is querying and provides different results.

3. Search engines are block the agent's use on your IP.

In any case - trust Hitslink more than WPG.

[Christi]

>In any case - trust Hitslink more than WPG. <

Thanks, Fathom, will do. And the keyword is popular, so that might explain a few things.

Christi

[Susan Goodson]

Since you admittedly get the same results manually searching as you do in WebPosition Gold then it sounds like what is most likely happening is the engines are using different databases. Engines keep several databases so that if one goes down, or has to been taken offline they have a back up and they also use the back up databases so that they can distribute search traffic during peak hours. That does not mean that your manual search or WebPosition is incorrect is just means that you are listed on at least one of their databases and it sounds like you are ranking pretty well on it based on the incoming traffic you are getting.

[fathom]

Thanks Susan -- I missed that one.

[Christi]

Thanks from me too, Susan. That might explain a couple other oddities with my last WebPosition run (big loss of position on a kw we've been fine on). I think I'll schedule more regular WebPosition runs and keep an eye on them...as well as the HitsLink results.

Christi

[fathom]

I think I'll schedule more regular WebPosition

Christi you may want to actually rely less on WPG less at least with Google/Yahoo.

Some members have received bans for this...( although I suspect they were probably going 1000 word sessions and 200 deep. Just be mindful that overuse - will put you in the limelight.

[Christi]

Fathom, it never occurred to me! Thanks for the heads-up.

[skibum]

Also, keep in mind that Google tends to update toward the end of the month, say 27th of the month, and it take the database while to settle. The rankings always fluctuate a little in between updates so what is recorded by a rank checker may be a little off from manual rank checks, but if you run it during the update periods your results may be all over the map.

During the Google update you can see the update in progress. If you do a search for "keyword", you'll get this:

[google.com...]

edit the URL in your address bar and put a 2 after the www so the URL will be:

[www2.google.com...]

and you'll see different results

there is also a www3 version

[www3.google.com...]

When all three of those show the same results, the update is usually over and a rank check is likely to be most accurate.

If you run your program once or twice a month you shouldn't have a problem with the engines taking any actions to prevent it from running or getting accurate results.