I know, I know. You want to see where you rank in Google.
As I’ve tried to tell you in the past, there are no such thing as ranking reports.
Yet you persist in knowing how you’re ranking for the handful of terms that you think people are using to search for you. So, you type these queries into Google and began to parse the results.
Perhaps you’re using some rank-checking tool to compare prior positions. Hopefully, you’re not doing it by hand.
Maybe you notice that your rankings have changed. If they’ve gone up, you shout, “hooray!”
If they’ve gone down, you pound your desk. Perhaps you call your SEO consultant to chew them out.
But seriously, you’re really missing the point.
First, search results fluctuate every single day (and most likely way more frequently than that).
Second, the terms that you’re spot-checking may actually have little to nothing to do with attracting new business.
Third, these head terms comprise a very small fraction of the relevant search traffic that can actually drive people to your site that might actually hire you.
Fourth, well there are a bunch of other reasons, but if I haven’t convinced you with the first three, it’s doubtful that I’m going to persuade you with these others.
If you want to spot-check something, track your traffic (your organic search traffic not your overall visitor numbers), inquiries and new cases generated from the web.