OK, here's the situation, me and my SEO analyst have a disagreement about how to report a ranking for a website when there are indented results above it. Please look at this ranking (I blurred the URL because we are not trying to promote here): I say that the site pointed out has a ranking of 5, but my SEO analyst reports it as a ranking of 4 because the techcrunch.com ranking is "counted as one". I know it's quite a trivial bet, but there is 100 rupees (about $2.50 ) riding on it! Particularly interested in hearing from any SEO's that compile ranking reports for their clients as to how they would report this ranking (4 or 5). Thanks, Peter
Thats an easy one. At the top of the page google will say 'Results 1 to 10 out of about 12000000 results' So if you have 10 results on a page the indented ones are included in the 10. So you are correct!!
Technically your in position 5 if you could the search results, but the indented results are just attached to a specific result because they rank equally for that keyword or keyword phrase, so really those search results will change at times removing the indent placing you in position 4. I would say your both right.
Haha, looks like this 100 rupees is mine for the taking She (the seo analyst) is still adament that the indented site counts as only one rank instead of 1st and 2nd position. Peter
I would look at it from the point of view of a human visitor. It is literally the fifth listing. There are ten listing on the page. If your rank was on the next page but there were one or more indented listings on the first page, would it really matter that technically your ranking would be less than ten? No, because the ten listings, indentions and all, would force your listing to the second page. So indents count and you win.
The problem is some of the software does rank it as #4. I'm pretty sure stuff like my WEB CEO would say that your site is in #4 position. So..... I'm not sure she's not right.
I'd say your site is in forth position as you only have 3 sites above you, however your page is in fifth position.
She is right, there is a post about this in Google Groups for webmasters discussing this, as I said in my above post technically your right if your counting down in the results, but the actual position you would be number 4, the indent is just a reference to another web page with the same relevancy and SEO weight on that site.