Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.
Joshua McAdams: Yes. Unless your business was a corn maze or something.
Brenda Malone: Can you rent a Co-Working space for even one month? Just rent a space for a month, take PLENTY of pictures of the space, inside, outside, pictures of you working at your desk, the entrances, etc. and put those images on your GMB. Get the postcard verification, and ask for your address not to be listed. After one month, go back to haven in the country, your job is done and you are the proud owner of a GMB profile in that city.
Chris Heidlebaugh: Brenda Malone do businesses that show an address get priority over those that don’t by any chance?
Caronda Hampton: Yes, you need a physical location to verify your business to get a GMB profile. The same address you use for your GMB should be the same address used when listing your business for citations which contribute to your overal rankings.
Donna Blackwood: Use a co-working space and use that address.
Adam John Humphreys: Rent an actual office on one to two month basis then cancel lol
Chris Heidlebaugh: If you get a coworking place is that against the google tos?
Huma Kanwal: Google search console KW ranking is not accurate. Use ahrefs or serpbot
Perry Bernard: Ranking is tailored to a user. A user adds factors such as location, search history, device, demographic etc, your ranking in GSC is based on a set of those user characteristics, which may not necessarily match your user characteristics. Additionally, GSC reports the average position of the keyword, and doesn’t report the total searches for that keyword for which the site did NOT show for. These factors make it very difficult for you to replicate the apparent result reported in GSC.
Michael Martinez: When viewing the average position report in Google Search Console, you need to drill down by region, device, page, query, and timeframe. Shorter timeframes give you a better idea of what searchers see than longer timeframes.
Shweta Raamanujam: So this is one such search query I was ranking for. I am currently looking at the keyword from Singapore but my article is nowhere to be seen. I have browsed through the first 5 pages of google as well. Previously, the analytics used to match and I could see the result on google but from the past 1 month, there seems to be a sudden dip in traffic. I am sorry for asking elementary doubts but I feel helpless right now.
Shweta Raamanujam: This is my performance report of past 3 months. If you see, there is a sudden drop in traffic.
Michael Martinez: In Search Console, you need to drill down as I explained above and look at what specifically changed and where. That should help you narrow down the possible "why" explanations.Looking at the full aggregated report like this doesn`t tell you anything except that something changed.
Shane Deubell: You only shot up for a month and half, what did you do in that time frame? Usually that means you did something spammy and they caught on.
Huma Kanwal: Google search console KW ranking is not accurate. Use ahrefs or serpbot
Michael Martinez: Huma Kanwal That is incorrect. Google Search Console is the only accurate measure of true rankings.
Perry Bernard: Ranking is tailored to a user. A user adds factors such as location, search history, device, demographic etc, your ranking in GSC is based on a set of those user characteristics, which may not necessarily match your user characteristics. Additionally, GSC reports the average position of the keyword, and doesn’t report the total searches for that keyword for which the site did NOT show for. These factors make it very difficult for you to replicate the apparent result reported in GSC.
Michael Martinez: When viewing the average position report in Google Search Console, you need to drill down by region, device, page, query, and timeframe. Shorter timeframes give you a better idea of what searchers see than longer timeframes.
Shweta Raamanujam: So this is one such search query I was ranking for. I am currently looking at the keyword from Singapore but my article is nowhere to be seen. I have browsed through the first 5 pages of google as well. Previously, the analytics used to match and I could see the result on google but from the past 1 month, there seems to be a sudden dip in traffic. I am sorry for asking elementary doubts but I feel helpless right now.
Shweta Raamanujam: This is my performance report of past 3 months. If you see, there is a sudden drop in traffic.
Michael Martinez: In Search Console, you need to drill down as I explained above and look at what specifically changed and where. That should help you narrow down the possible "why" explanations.Looking at the full aggregated report like this doesn`t tell you anything except that something changed.
Shane Deubell: You only shot up for a month and half, what did you do in that time frame? Usually that means you did something spammy and they caught on.