I have been using Google webmaster tool for quite some time now.. but every time i check the rank of my site on a particular keywords and i click on the link to that keyword in google webmaster tool, my sitename does not appear in that position. for example: google webmaster told me that my rank in a particular keyword is 3 but i found out that my page does not exist (when i search that particular keyword), i try to look at page 2,3,4, nothing seem to be appearing.. please advise..
I'm guessing you're talking about the top search query screen in WMT. Perhaps this will help understand what the output means.
in other words, google is using ip filtering..everytime you go to "google.com" ?? i notice that in yahoo you can still see your page ranking in US region even if you are from other country.. just type yahoo US then a yahoo US search page will shows up.. does it work the same way in google? google.ca, google.com..etc
google tends to filter results based on geographical locations as well as search history behavior. someone in arkansas will get different search results than someone in california, in other words. also, your website might have shown up as the #3 result for a day, or an hour, or whatever, then dropped off. I find that sometimes, i will rank high for a keyphrase from an article i wrote, then quickly drop off.
Did you read http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35252&hl=en? Especially where it talks about position: It's the absolute highest position that some page on your site ranked for that search phrase sometime in the last week... What you see for your rankings in the SERPs and what others see are almost always different. There are so many things at play with what shows on page one... Personalization based on where you are accessing the web from which is based on your IP (Geo targetting)... whether you are logged into a Google account... Google occasionally throwing newly indexed URLs on page one for a short period of time... etc. Don't count on this page for an accurate ranking for your keywords. Use something like IBP or WebPosition Gold or some other ranking tool if you need to pull rankings on a regular basis. That page in WMT is basically to show you 1) which search phrases are causing URLs from your site to be seen most often in the SERPs and 2) which search phrases are causing people to click through most often from the SERPs to your site.
rank and search varies with region. Like a given website can be at position 4 for google.co.uk but might be at poistion 12 for google.co.in
I don't think that webmaster tool kit is anything wrong.If Google counts a very small quantity of back links for your site,than it seems that your backlink is so poor mean Google doesn't count is as a quality backlink.I think it's for so...