What is ranking?
A real thing that is reported dishonestly more often than almost anything else in this trade.
There is no single position
Two people searching the same words from opposite ends of one town can be shown different orders, on the same afternoon, from the same phone model. A report saying you are fourth has averaged that variation away and then presented the average as a fact.
Why agencies quote it anyway
Because it is the only number that sounds like progress before any money has arrived. It moves early, it moves often, and it can be selected: quote the query where you did best and the report looks like work.
We would rather show you the two numbers that cannot be chosen that way.
What to watch instead
How often you were shown, and how many people came. Both sit in Search Console, both are counts rather than averages, and together they answer whether anything is actually happening. The hub explains both, and coming up first covers the work itself.
Questions worth asking
So should I ignore position completely?
No. Watch the direction rather than the number, over months rather than days, and only for the handful of searches that actually describe what you sell. A rising trend across those is meaningful.
Why did I rank well for a week and then drop?
New pages are sometimes shown prominently for a short period while the engine gathers evidence about them. What follows is not a penalty, it is the provisional position being replaced by an earned one.
Updated