What's Wrong With Webmaster Tools?

[pokerextras]

Is google webmaster tools totally inaccurate for everybody? There's a search term which i rank 28 for, and last week wt was telling me that i rank 96 for it. A few days later it said that i rank 46 for it. A few days after that it said that i rank 19, and now it says 16. Throughout this, i've stayed in position 28. It's also showing that i get 66% of my traffic from one term and 33% from another, but when i look at analytics, the 33% term sends far more traffic than the 66% one, and i'm also getting 70% of my traffic from other keywords. Am i reading it wrong, or is it the same for everybody?

[PokerDude]

Webmaster Tools is a crude tool, and the other assortment of Google tools (e.g., "site" command) are all erratic at best. I wouldn't put a lot of stock in them, as Google has never quite gotten it right. For what it's worth, Yahoo tools are a lot more accurate.

[Unknown Webmaster]

Be sure to set it to the right region.

[Michael Martinez]

Use Webmaster Tools for the opportunity it provides you to interact with Google's service. Don't use it as a reporting tool.

[pokerdapyx]

Yes the same thing goes over here.
In case you want to see your google position you could use this tool:

http://www.allno1.com/google_serp/mu...nk_checker.asp

If you want to see how many links you have use the yahoo site explorer.

In case you want to see how many pages of content are indexed in google use this comand: "site:yourdomainname.com -inurl:idjf"

Make sure you get as many links as possible and your pages will get indexed and show high in the SERPs.

[pokerextras]

The obvious beauty of webmaster tools is that it shows you all the keywords that you're ranking for, including those that you haven't been targeting. I took unknown webmasters advice and changed the location. It's actually quite accurate now. Does anybody use the geo targeting function? Does it help you to rank higher in your chosen location? Does it drop your ranking in other locations? Any other webmaster tools features that i should be using?

[Michael Martinez]

The obvious beauty of webmaster tools is that it shows you all the keywords that you're ranking for...

I really, really wish it did that.

In the absence of anything else, or lacking the necessary knowledge to use something else, someone using Webmaster Tools will get some benefit from looking at their reports.

But their data is incomplete and very inaccurate.

[LadyHoldem]

It's even worse if your site is crawled by google news, it doesn't differentiate, so you're #1 for just about everything.

[leporello]

Always unreliable. It keeps telling me that I'm ranked number 9 for poker.

[pokerextras]

When i change to strictly u.k results, it's totally accurate, so you may be 9 for poker somewhere in the world?