Hi Can anyone tell me if G Webmaster tools are reliable or not, as it informs me that my Site is in the first page of google for particular keywords when it clearly isn't. Just starting to bug me. Thanks
It all depend on the Datacenter you are accesing, if you live outside us maybe they're showing the ranking from a US datacenter. Are you on US or another country ?
The search results of google are frequently changes. So when you check the result in google with the keyword at the position mentioned in google webmaster, sometimes it shows no results. Yes it is sometimes due to the different data centres.
you should try to search the keyword term on other Google extensions like .com, .co.uk, etc. and maybe the update frequency of serps and webmaster tool data is not the same.
I would like to know how good google analytics is to be honest, its a good tool but I think it doesnt count everything
In short google webmaster tools are the most reliable tools on internet. As it is run by huge company "google".
Google Webmaster Tools is very good in my opinion, but just like any tool, you need to know how it works to get the best from it. As stated by Charoseo, different users will see different search results for the same search keywords. If Webmaster Tools sees your site top for certain keywords - great!
Google webmaster tool is real and it provide many kind of helps.We can see the pagerank also in the webmaster tool.
I wouldnt count on it to be accurate. Check your traffic logs, to see if your receiving traffic from that keyword, and also if you think your getting personalized search results do the following: (1) Log out of your Google account (2) In the address bar, append &pws=0 present at the end of your search URL
I'd believe most of the information there, but not all. You should use it along with other free online tools.