Variation in Google Webmasters search queries and real ranking

Question

Google webmasters Search Query Tool shows that my website is ranked for a particular keyword with an average position in Google, but when I type the same keyword in Google, I cant see my website ranked in that position. Why is that?

Example: Webmasters says that my webpage is ranked for the kw best hard drive brand with an average position of 4. But my website is ranked in 7th page. Why is that?

From this question, Google Webmasters tools search queries position it is said that Google images will also count as ranking. But I can't find my website in Google images also.

Answer 1

It is because Search Query Tool returns average. As results are personalised based on you, your location, ad-words etc., "average" is the position your site ranked at on average for different users.

Answer 2

Search Analytics can be extremely useful, but you have to click quite a bit to get there.

There is often a huge variation between rankings in different countries. So it's good to start checking that:

From there you can filter on a specific country and look the changes of positions over time:

It's good to also check if there are two or more pages showing up for a keyword, this can make a big difference.

Note that it's also important to check from an Incognito browser. If you're logged into Google you generally get different results - although your own sites would most often rank higher, so that doesn't seem to be the case here.

To decrease the time it takes me to find ways to improve rankings of pages I have created a tool that shows me precisely what I want to see in Search Analytics. You can find it through https://pr9seotools.com/