Search Queries - Average position in Webmaster Tools is way off

[yandr]

I have been using the Webmaster tools for years and the average position reported for Search queries is way off for at least one of my sites, which I can easily verify.

The site is not in english and receives great traffic, scoring extremely well seo-wise. However, even for keywords that it constantly appears on the first 1 or 2 places in search results, the average position reported in webmaster tools can be anything from 5 to 30(!).

I am well aware of the fact that search is personalized and results vary (especially if you log-in), but the differences are in many cases vast. Moreover, localized search is not a factor as the keywords are not in english and thus only visitors from my country can use them.

Any thoughts on this? How accurate are these numbers?

[aristotle]

Did you check what it says for various countries individually?

[yandr]

The traffic comes from a single country (99,95% or something).

Has anyone else noticed this? Especially some with a non-english site?

[aristotle]

Have you used the filters to isolate different types of search such as mobile, web, and image? Also, locations. If you explore the different filters, you might discover something.

[netmeg]

Mine's always been way off across a wide variety of sites. I don't even look at it anymore.

[aakk9999]

I noticed the following:

- If you have two entries on the same page (let's say entry 1&2), then the average position will be 1.5.

I presume the same may be if you have an entry on the first page and on the second page and your position on the second page gets impression (i.e. the user clicks on the 2nd page) - then the position reported would be the average of the two, hence it would appear to be worse than what your best entry is.

- If you have a first entry on Google Places, then this counts as position #1 (I am not sure if 2nd position on Google Places would still count as #1 or would count as #2)

[tedster]

Thanks for that - I'm going to pay closer attention to my average position numbers for a while. Maybe there is more value here than I originally thought. After all, there should be, right?