Why the rank jumped and skipped the 2nd-4th sites?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Khizer Ishtiaq:   · No it`s not showing the rankings. The number that you circled is the authority of the domain. Mostly site owners use PBNs to Boost their site DA, PA but that`s totally useless. Never ever trust on anyone`s metrics only.
  
  
• 
  Becky Westmoreland: I don’t understand what tool you have installed. PA and DA are not even a thing.
  
  
• 
  Sohail Qadir: Becky Westmoreland It is Moz dear. It seems you are new to SEO.
  
  
• 
  Becky Westmoreland: I wouldn’t trust it.
  
  
• 
  George G.: This is a third party tool from moz, not google. Not accurate at all. It would be better if you disable it so it does not confuse you.
  
  
• 
  Amru Shaban: Wow, so many people having no clue, yet being SO sure in the advice they give.
  
  That number is not the authority of the domain, as Khizer Ishtiaq wrongly said. The authority of the domain is the one represented by DA which, believe it or not, is short for… Domain ity.
  
  Besides, PBN links are not useless but very risky so I would steer away from them.
  
  Becky Westmoreland said DA and PA are not even a thing. Wrong. They are not the best metrics, because they are not official metrics from Google - this I agree with - but they are arguably among the best 3rd party metrics you could get, along with metrics from Ahrefs and a couple other tools.
  
  Honestly, the way she is so sure of her (arguably) misleading answer baffles me, especially since every SEO heard of MOZ, which has been on the SEO scene since 2004.
  
  I agree with George G. that this tool is not accurate at all since it is not from Google. Yet he fails to specify that you can’t check on your competitors’ Google data, so you will most likely need a 3rd party tool eventually for competitor research.
  
  So as far as your own stats are concerned, not that accurate. The search engine (Google, Bing, etc.) will give you the most complete data. For competition research though? It is, again arguably, one of the best but keep in mind that the data you get is not accurate.
  
  For instance, I am using Ahrefs and it is showing my website as having 2-3x less traffic than it actually has.
  
  Jermz Pacs to answer your actual question: I can’t clearly see the pictures, but most likely those are the elements on the SERP (search engine results page) and they are numbered for your ease/convenience. The reason they jump a few number is because there are some other elements on the page which take the “missing spot” for instance “People also ask”.
  
  We were all used to SERPS showing 10 websites. Now they are showing 10 elements - with both websites and snippets/people also ask etc being regarded as “elements”. This is what I call them, so don’t take this as their actual name.
  
  I once found a SERP with 4 websites and 6 other elements like featured snippet, people also ask, Google recommends, etc. Sadly I don’t remember the actual keyword.
  
  Hope this answers your question.
  
  Also I really hope people will stop being so sure of themselves when posting things they have no clue about.
  
  
• 
  Amru Shaban: Jermz Pacs I squinted my eyes a bit. It looks like the missing positions are 2, 3, 4, and 5, correct?
  
  Well, each question on the People Also Ask is represented by one of those numbers.
  
  So you have:
  
  1 - website2->5 questions6->9 websites
  
  And the 10th is not visible, but it can be another website or another element like related searches.
  
  Hope this helps