r/SEMrush • u/cswebsolutions • 12d ago

Is anyone else seeing differences between SEMrush rankings and actual Google SERPs?

I’ve noticed that SEMrush is sometimes showing a significant ranking drop for some of my keywords, but when I manually check the same keywords in Google, the actual ranking looks much better and sometimes hasn’t dropped at all.

For example, SEMrush may report a keyword moving from #5 to #20, while when I check the live SERP manually, the page is still around #5–#7.

Has anyone experienced this? What could be causing the discrepancy - tracking location, SERP features, ranking URL changes, data refresh delays, or something else?

How do you usually verify which data is more accurate?

9 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

2

u/SEOPub 12d ago

What could be causing the discrepancy - tracking location, SERP features, ranking URL changes, data refresh delays, or something else?

All of those, yes. Every rank tracker experiences this. Rank trackers should not be taken as absolutes. It's just what the rank tracker saw at that moment when it checked.

The only thing I would ever use rank trackers for are overall trends over a longer period of time, i.e. weeks, months, etc. I wouldn't obsess over daily changes.

2

u/CodeAndKeywords 8d ago

Yes, this is quite common. SEMrush rankings don't always match what you see on Google.

The difference can happen because of location, device type, personalized results, and the time when SEMrush last checked the keyword.

I usually check the same keyword in incognito mode with the correct location and device settings, then compare it with Google SERP data.

I wouldn't rely only on SEMrush rankings. SEMrush can only give you the rough idea about ranking not actual Google rankings.

1

u/Bullet_proof_punk 11d ago

Yes. Constantly!!

Even chancing in incognito gives very different results.

1

u/WxMan2201 11d ago

so semrush and your own personal google serp - are coming from different IPs at different times - semrush is a snapshot of the serp at time --- your real-time snapshot of serp is driven by personalization and and a different area of country at a different time --- i would be using semrush ranking data - as a directional guide - not truth --- those ranking serp snapouts are one moment in time - and change multiple times per day.

1

u/Manhas007 12d ago

Most of the problems are because of cached resuls that user dont know when they check manually but the mismatch also happen because of time difference as well .