There are a number of reasons why your web site may not be reported as being in the top 30 or top XX matches. The most common reason is that you simply need to use WebPosition Gold's Page Generator and Page Critic to optimize your positions so you do show up near the top of the results.
However, if you feel that you should be in the top 30 and WebPosition says you're not, then it's possible you may have the Reporter mission setup wrong somewhere. WebPosition in this scenario is just not "seeing" your pages properly. An easy way to test this is to simply go to the search engine in your browser (via the engine link on the Report) and do the search there and make sure you are in fact not listed. Be careful to type the keyword/phrase EXACTLY the same or you'll get different results! If you use quotes in WebPosition, be sure to use quotes when typing in the phrase in the search engine. Also search using the same case. Upper and lower case letters will often produce different results.
If you can find your page listed on the detail report but WebPosition is not reporting any positions on the Concise Summary or Summary reports, you've most likely made an error in entering the domain name.
Common mistakes are:
1) Misspelling the domain name on the Mission tab.
2) Including the page name in the domain on the Mission tab
3) Including a subdirectory name in the domain when the subdirectory is NOT indexed in the search engine. Make sure its just www.mydomain.com. It should include a subdirectory name ONLY if you share the domain from your Host service rather than having your own domain name.
The text in the domain name field must be an exact match to the domain showing on the Detail report from the search engine. However, if the Detail report shows http://www.mydomain.com, then when WebPosition searches for www.mydomain.com that you inputted into domain name box, it WILL find it. However, if you enter www.mydomain.com and the search engine only indexed it as http://mydomain.com, it's NOT going to find it since the "www" part isn't there to find. The solution in this scenario is to not enter the "www" or other prefix causing the problem when that portion was not indexed by the search engine. It's always best to try and submit domains in a consistent manner whenever possible. You can also list multiple variations of your domain name in the domain name box by separating them with commas.
If the problem is that you don't see your Web site on the detail report either, but when you do a search manually on the engine, you do find matches, there may be something else wrong. Make sure that WebPosition searches for the EXACT same text as what you entered in the search engine yourself. Example: Cigar, cigar, and cigars will ALL produce different results. If you enter the exact same keyword in the search engine and still get different results than what WebPosition reported AND the searches were done within a few minutes of each other, please e-mail a copy of the Reporter Mission (MIS) file and a detailed explanation of the problem to help@webposition.com We'll check it out ASAP to see if the engine recently changed the way they do their default searches.
Warning: When comparing WebPosition's results against your own, avoid using the links to the search engines offered by the Internet Explorer's Search button/option. IE will sometimes search the major engines a little differently than someone who went to the search engine directly would. Avoid this confusion by going to the search engine in your browser by clicking on the link in one of the WebPosition reports.
If you are doing a search and WebPosition reports that your site was not found in the top 30 and you confirmed that the search engine says the same thing, then that means you are not ranked in the top 30 positions. This is quite common and is exactly what WebPosition helps you correct. You can also do a broader search to see if you might be in the top 100 or top 200 by changing "Matches to Scan" on the Options tab of the Reporter Mission screen. This will lengthen the time to search though. Also bear in mind that even if you do show up in the top 100, few people will look for you past the first 30 or so matches. See the Page Generator and Page Critic modules in WebPosition Gold for advice on how to tune your page so that it shows up near the top of the results.
