The Bloggers Guide to SEO by Aaron Wall

[Atlanta Realtor]

I just checked out this article, and it really opened my eyes to a few things. I really like the rank checker. I spend an hour a day sometimes doing manual searches. I really like that tool.

[glenng]

Are you finding any differences between the manual check and the Rank Checker rankings?

[Max]

I'm sure there will be differences. First of all rank checker is not using the same data center as you may use, second of all - rank checker is using Google API, which is not exactly the same as the user interface we used to - both of them can use different data sets. I'm not saying it is not accurate, I'm just saying there are may be differences between the rank checker and the actual web results you get.

[theRiversidehomesource]

I have an issue with the Ronk Checker...
It includes "Indented" results...which are duplicate results from the same website. I have kept a pattern of tracking which site I am in the serps, so it's different to see the indented results included in the ranking numbers.

[Max]

I emailed a link to this discussion to Aaron, and here's what answered:

Hi Max
a couple things worth noting

- the rank checker does scrape google search results (since they discontinued their real API a few years back and replaced it with a worthless JavaScript one)

- since we are scraping data we grab 100 results per page (to lower the chance of them blocking you)...since Google clusters listings differently depending on the # of results on the page. see the differences in clustering at the following URLs

http://www.google.com/search?q=credit+cards (no or few clustered results)
http://www.google.com/search?q=credit+cards&num=100 (significantly more clustering, particularly near the top)

- if you are logged into a google account lots of ranking difference issues amount to personalization issues. for regular google search you can add &pws=0 to the end of the address bar to turn personalization off. the rank checker options screen also allows you to turn personalization off http://www.seobook.com/images/rank-checker-pref.png

cheers
aaron

[theRiversidehomesource]

Thanks Max,

That makes sense since he has to scrape the results why the clustered/indented results are going to add some variation.

Has anyone built and App based on that program that plugs the results into a chart so you can track progress over time?

[Max]

Originally Posted by theRiversidehomesource

Has anyone built and App based on that program that plugs the results into a chart so you can track progress over time?

Not that I'm aware of. But I know that keyword ranking tool from digitalpoint keeps track of your rankings overtime and even builds ranking graphs for you. It requires some PHP code on your site though and you have to run the tool on daily bases to capture daily results.

[glenng]

With Digitalpoint, it gives you the results based upon the API (if you have gotten one previously - don't think they are currently available) which does have big differences.

Just recently on WMW they were discussing a software program that was being blocked by Google, which checked for rankings.

I do appreciate Aaron's response and guidance on the rank checker.