Comments on: What does this Google Webmaster Tools data mean?

By: Sean - Seo Blogger

Sean - Seo Blogger — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 21:57:10 +0000

So now you know what does that mean to you and how do you feel about the massive increase in Google's WMT 'Links to your Site' Data?

By: Freelance Unbound

Freelance Unbound — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:01:42 +0000

I saw it at the bottom of page 1. I was told by an online editor of my acquaintance that Google search depends on a host of things, not least of which is browsing history – so you can look for the same thing with the same search string on different machines and the results will fluctuate quite a bit.

By: Malcolm Coles

Malcolm Coles — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:59:11 +0000

Ahem, someone just pointed out that there's a space in the second "youtube uk". If I look at the data for the 12 July for "youtube uk" (which is what the first graph is), it's:
Position in search results
2nd page 170
3rd page + 28
So that would explain it - the page has just vanished from the results.

But that makes little sense as I still see it top of page 2 with personalised search turned off.

I am going for a lie down.

By: Jim Banks

Jim Banks — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 11:38:11 +0000

Average position went from 7.0 to 9.9 and that might have thrown you off the cliff of the first page while they experimented with other universal search gizmos or something and as we know anything off the first page is a waste of time.

Someone else got your impressions I am guessing.

Results are much more real time since Caffeine, so to see that swing so quickly is not that unusual.

By: Gareth

Gareth — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:48:15 +0000

I agree with @rishil here, it's just Google giving random nonsense data. Just like it does with its keyword tools.

By: rishil

rishil — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:37:47 +0000

I love the term "Pinocchio SEO" Andy! (p.s please come back to twitter!)

@malcolm - personally I have given up trying to really make sense of Google supplied data apart from analytics - its highly unreliable and unrealitic in my opinion. I just stick to gut feel...

By: Malcolm Coles

Malcolm Coles — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:32:33 +0000

I did a small increase in traffic for the term when I first published the post, but I think that was just part of Google bumping a fresh blog post up in the results to see if got any interest. I don't know what people are searching for when they search for "youtube uk" (presumably some UK version of the site?) so I wasn't surprised at the very low CTRs I was getting given my result had demographic in its title (not that I looked into it that much as I wasn't that bothered about it as a search terms). The collapse in the WMT graph hasn't changed the traffic level much - but the CTR was so low that's not surprising. What's so surprising is that the WMT data seems to be junk. I was in position 6-10 for the whole period - but impressions collapsed from 40,000 a day to under 1,000, even though search volumes for the term didn't change. The other alternative is that the data is accurate - after the date of the change, I was in position 6-10 for 2.5% of the time, and not shown at all the under 97.5% of the time. This would make the graph accurate - but it's not behaviour I've noticed before (I could see some logic to it - low CTR Google decides my page isn't relevant so stops showing it most of the time - but shows it a few times, just in case). Er, I've never heard anyone say Google works like that though!!

By: Andy Beard

Andy Beard — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:18:19 +0000

Welcome to the rabbit hole

I have been discussing stuff like this in private with people for over 18 months.

I bet you didn't see a significant increase in traffic though Google have to have some wiggle room.
You may have seen a decrease in traffic on other terms

In a webinar I did for a private member site 8 months ago I called this "Pinocchio SEO" with the suggestion that 99% of what you read about how SEO works isn't actually correct.