Actual ranking within a Search Engine

[pcun]

I am trying to find how my site ranks within the SE's.

Can anyone point me in the right direction of how I can query Google,Yahoo,MSN, Ask Jeeves to find out how I rank for certain keyword phrases?

[pcun]

This is obviously a very difficult question to answer?
Can anyone even point me in the right direction.
I've been searching Google for anything on this and so far have come up with nothing.
Any help greatly appreciated.

[Marcia]

Basically, you know what keyword phrases your site is relevant or optimized for, so just doing searches for those and looking through should show.

I find that the easiest way is to watch the stats (or logs) and check all the different keyword phrases people are coming in on, since they use phrases we haven't thought of. Then I take the list and look right at the search engines to see.

[pcun]

Hi Marcia,

Thanks for that,
Yes that is probably the most labour intensive method.
For instance, if one of my keywords is ranked on page 10 I have to scroll through each page until I find my site.

But what I want to do is search the Google/Yahoo/MSN index for a keyword phrase for a particular site, so I know instantly that xyz keyword is ranked number 50.

Any thoughts on this?

[bdw]

Here's a tip I picked up on another forum to help you find your ranking in Google. Click on the pages whose position you want to check (so they get highlighted in the results), then go to http://www.google.com/ie?q=&num=100&hl=en . The Google results using this link only show the links, not descriptions, so it's easier to scroll down and find where your page ranks. If you set your Google options to display 100 results per page this makes it a little quicker.

Alternatively, http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ has a free tool for shecking Google serps.

[Marcia]

Thank you for providing the free tool. But as a general practice, please check the individual search engines' guidelines and policies with regard to automated querying of their index, and how to use the Google API, to ensure being in compliance with their TOS.

Sites have been known to have been removed from Google for violating that policy, so discretion is very much advisable.

Mod note: let's avoid mention of any commercial services, and stay with general principles of how to find data we need at the engines.

[dannysullivan]

Actually, the biggest issue has really come up with site owners from being blocked when using a tool to check on rankings.

WebPosition is one of the oldest and still most sophisticated ranking tools out there. Plenty of people use it to check on how they are doing. Google in particular doesn't like it and has warned against using the tool, saying it violates their terms. But I have never, ever heard or seen of a site that has been dropped for using the tool.

What has happened is that you might be using the tool, only to discover that Google prevents you from access Google itself to search. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-883558.html from 2002 is a good example of how this hit a variety of people.

If you're a paid SEW member, http://searchenginewatch.com/_subscribers/topics/article.phpr?id=null&topic=sem_tools_rank_checking and http://searchenginewatch.com/_subscribers/more/article.php/3500831 has a collection of past articles and references about such tools.

Overall, rank checking is a poor way to measure your search health. You can't guess at all the terms you might be found for. As Marcia said, use a log analysis or web analytics term that can extract the actual terms people used to find your site. More accurate and helpful data, nor are you violating anyone's terms.

[pcun]

Thanks Danny, Marcia et al. Very useful.

Danny, your post says that Google openly advise people not to use query software to see their ranking. What about the other SE's? Do Yahoo/MSN have a similar policy.

The original question was prompted by a tool I had seen developed by an SEO company that enables their customers to see their ranking within numerous SE's. It was in a grid format with keywords across the top and SE's along the left side. You could see what position you ranked in a particular SE for a particular keyword(phrase). I'm not sure what benefit the customer gets from this but it looks like,

i) it could actually be harming their ranking with the possibly of getting blacklisted if they queried their rankings too often;
ii)this is not the best metric to go by when judging success, i.e. what about unique visitors, bandwidth, different keywords that are being missed.

[bdw]

The tool at Digitalpoint that I mentioned in message five uses the Google API and it is perfectly "legal" and free :)

[Marcia]

Even something as "cheap" as what comes with stock Cpanel hosting, showing all the search terms in AWStats and the last 300 visitors is invaluable. We can never think up by ourselves all the different ways that people search.

All you do with the "last 300" is click on the search engine result listing and it takes you right to the page. Sure, it's time consuming - but I use it daily when a site is HOT in the SERPS and I want to grab search phrases for further content development. It's one of the most valuable uses of time I've found.

But then again, this is what I do for a relatively small number of sites; it probably wouldn't work for heavy volume. In cases with great numbers of searches and sites, it could be too costly in terms of staff time and effort.

But I use it to get into the minds of potential customers to further develop and target toward how they search, the phrasing they use and what they're looking for, in addition to traffic analysis.