How do you track it?

[rescom]

I know that most people here are compulsive about our rankings...Understandable as am I.

How do you track your site?

What tools do you use? How do you keep records?

I use Google Rankings as well as a similiar tool for Yahoo, and a program called Dynamic Web Ranking.

I keep track of the results in Excel by date, keywords and search engines. I also keep notes as to what was changed and when and what results the change had if any.

What does everyone else use? I am just wondering if there is an easier way....

[rlrouse]

I do everything by hand with the aid of a spreadsheet. It takes a bit mor effort but you learn a lot more and remain in the good graces of the search engines. Automated anything is frowned upon by Google.

[achronister]

I don't. Playing 10000 keywords in overture and adwords. Multiply that a few times for organic keywords. Makes it a little difficult.

I do track some of the main ones (around 500) with digital point tracking tool that uses the google API. It seems to be a good one and won't get you in trouble I assume.

[ronniethedodger]

I don't use any keyword trackers at all. I look at my search referrals, and if there is a glaring omission in those referrals then I adjust.

Adjustments usually mean either tweaking or adding more pages ... usually the later because I have more time to do additions without obsessing over whether I am ranking for specific terms.

If the traffic is not there then fix it. It makes no sense to fix it before it is broken in other words.
This works well for my situation, I control the sites in question -- I would imagine if it is your client's website then you would have to go on pre-entry keyword tracking and playing the odds (unless you have access to their server logs).

I do however monitor (by hand) new product start-ups initially -- only for the purpose of seeing that are getting indexed properly. If not, then I run more links on external sites to get the puppy jumpstarted. Then it is back to the search referrals.

Overture/AdWords I don't deal with ... someone else does. This is a completely different game and the person that handles it is all over the trackers and monitors for keyword searches. I am not sure what he uses, so cannot speak for him.

[andyj]

The Linux servers we run for hosting use webalizer to record stats.


Webalizer analyses the Apache log at 01:00 every morning and produces graphs and reports. I won't show you the stats of a live site but
www.badteeth.co.uk/1x2y3z shows the sort of things recorded.

Andy

[danbroughton]

I dont check rankings - just referrals and queries - this is a good tool for small-medium sites and very inexspensive - http://www.perlscriptsjavascripts.co...unt/index.html

[OtitO]

Like ronniethedodger, I do not use any specific tool fro rankings.I use Statcounter. The service is just great with many features. You get info on referrals,keywords, geographic distribution of visitors, most popular pages, pageloads and unique visitors, revisits, exit pages and other things.
To track bots I use urchin stats although I find this one more complicated than what I need.


Offtopic: where should posts about hosting go? Like asking for recommendations.

[deluxar]

so far, i wrote my little perl script to analyze. for big sites, the referal urls contain keywords that need to strip out to be useful. i'm also looking for any software that can do gd job for me.

-deluxar

[ronniethedodger]

For a commercial server log analyzer, I recommend Sawmill. There is nothing that you cannot get this thing to do. It is really that good. Moderately priced, with price breaks on multiple site licenses. This will install on your server or run as a stand-alone exe on your desktop.

Sawmill has a free copy available if you have time to do some testing for them. This does not appear to be too involved, so jump on it. ;0)

A php tracking script that is very nice is PHPCounter VII. All is required is php, no database needed. I have been playing around with this script and it is very good. It is free for non-commercial use only, but he does sell commercial licenses ... not sure what the cost is.

[mlillig]

Indextools will track any online search engine campaigns that you use....down to the keyword level. If you want to know which of your 500 keywords are converting, then it will show you.