Search Console says you’re position four for a query. You’re not ranking fourth. You’re ranking fourth on average, and that’s a different thing.
Here’s what the number is. Every time someone searched that query and your site showed up, Google recorded where you were, then averaged every one of those together. And those searches weren’t the same search. Someone in Dallas, where you ranked second. Someone in Seattle, where you ranked ninth. Someone on a phone, where the map pack pushed you down. Someone logged in who’d visited your site before, so Google nudged you up. Position four is the average of all of them. On none of them were you fourth.
Then there’s time. Say you were third for two weeks, something changed, and you dropped to twelfth for two weeks. Search Console shows the month: average position seven and a half. You were never seven and a half. The number describes a position you never held.
And here’s one that confuses everyone. Your rank tracker says three, Search Console says 6.2, so which one’s lying? Neither. The rank tracker checked once, from one place, logged out. That’s a photograph. Search Console averaged every real person who saw you. That’s a blur. They’re measuring different things, and both are right.
So what do you do with it. Stop reading the number as a rank and read it as a center: position four means you’re usually around there, could be two, could be seven, depends who’s asking. Watch the direction, not the decimal: four to six over a month is a real move, 4.1 to 4.4 is noise. And when it matters, shorten the date range to a week. A monthly average hides the day everything changed.
Average position is what your ranking looks like from far away. Useful. Just don’t mistake it for standing in one spot.
Google’s documentation on how position is calculated: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7042828
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SEO Walks is a short series. I walk most days, and most of my thinking about search happens out there, so I started recording it.
One idea per episode. Sometimes a myth that doesn’t hold up, sometimes just how I do things after twenty years.
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