Relevancy and Accuracy of Top Search Queries Tool in Google Webmaster Tools
Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 15th, 2007
Google has created a set of tools to help Webmasters see interesting and important Google data about your site (try it here). One of the “statistics” related tools gives you “Top Search Queries” for discovering keywords that you rank for (see image). The queries are more “fun” than interesting, in our case. Several of the keywords we don’t even rank for at all and almost all of the keywords are not even related to the purpose of our site.
I ran a keyword ranking report (feature of SoloSEO) to verify the rankings of these keywords in Google. Below are the results, and I added a column to the report with what Google Webmaster Central says is the rank. Green denotes a match, orange is within 2, yellow is more off, and red is way off (although I didn’t check in the 200-300 range).
| Keyword | Google Webmaster Central |
Yahoo | MSN/Live | |
| jensen | 4 | |||
| david ristau | 262 | |||
| get blog gooogle | 1 | 1 | 6 | |
| domainfellow blog | 1 | 1 | 9 | 2 |
| soloseo | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| “named on that page” | 1 | 1 | 37 | 6 |
| michael jensen blog | 3 | 4 | 1 | 5 |
| apply yourself seo | 3 | 4 | 1 | 7 |
| tagged | 5 | 5 | ||
| blog tag games | 5 | 6 | ||
| blog tagging | 7 | 6 | ||
| “blog tag” pulver | 6 | 6 | 25 | 4 |
| phonitick spewling | 5 | 7 | 11 | 7 |
| spehl korector | 7 | 8 | 7 | |
| lucky blitz chip | 9 | 9 | ||
| 3 12 month free | 10 | 12 | ||
| stewart jensen | 6 | 15 | ||
| $350 in | 3 | 18 | ||
| chocolate experiments | 17 | 19 | ||
| lisa barone | 20 | 22 | 38 |
80% of the listed keywords’ “average top position” are within 2 of their actual ranking (not bad). The keyword “jensen” is way off, we’re not even in the top 100 for that. The keyword “david ristau” (from the blog tag tree) ranks us way in the “never browse to” range of Google’s results, so I’m not sure why Google even displays that one. (Update: I just ran this again and it said we were ranked #7 for seo (whoa sweet!), but we’re not even in the top 100 (ouch!) for that one…yet.)
I hope you also noticed how “irrelevant” these keywords are to what we actually do (what we do). SoloSEO.com ranks for many more keywords than those in this short list; keywords that are actually relevant to what we do. From our site analytics, I know we get organic traffic from our relevant keywords, as well as from some of these that Google lists.
It seems to me that Google calculates the “Top search queries” based on actual user searches. This list of “top search queries” is always changing, maybe even daily, which leads me to also believe that Google is considering click-through with these results. However, it still boggles me why other relevant keywords don’t show up because they are in our analytics.
What’s your experience, are your “Top search queries” relevant and accurate?
Visited 1820 times January 15th, 2007 Michael D Jensen
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3 Comments Add your own
1. Mark Barrera | January 15th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
I have found it to be very accurate.
First, you have to remember that what you see is an average rank over the last 7 days, not the ranking at that moment.
Second, you didn’t mention if what you had selected for the search type (though I see you have all locations selected). It defaults to show all search types (image, web, directory, mobile, etc) and location (US, Canada, etc). If you didn’t specify web search then your analysis will be thrown off. Also, you would need to check your rankings on each different Google country domain that are listed in the your dropdown selection to know if you are ranked for that term. (You might not rank in the US but might in Italy!)
2. Michael D Jensen | January 15th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Thanks Mark, I’ve spoken with several others since this write up and it seems to be accurate for many others. It would be interesting to watch it for a week and check every word that comes up for a ranking. I highly doubt we were ranked #7 for “SEO”, even in Italy, as we are still a fairly new site and are not getting any traffic through that query.
Thanks for your comments, nice to hear about your experience with this tool.
3. Vanessa Fox | February 8th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Sorry I’m so late in commenting; I only just saw this.
This blog post I wrote may provide more insight on why you don’t see queries for which you get more traffic:
fresher query stats
Basically, the list is ordered based on the largest number of searches, not based on what sends the site the most traffic, but we are looking at ways to provide the query stats data in expanded ways as well.
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