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Ask HN: What do you use to monitor SEO Keywords?

9 points by rcavezza 16y ago

I was looking for a tool to make it easy to monitor keywords today, but came up nearly empty. What do you guys use?

il 16y ago
Ginzametrics (YC startup) seems very well reviewed.
- flignats 16y ago
  +1 for Ginzametrics. Also, SEOmoz has a service for serp tracking.
bee 16y ago
monitor keywords as in keywords position in search engines?
- rcavezza 16y ago
  Yes - sorry about being vague. Specifically keyword position in Google.
  - sagacity 16y ago
    > Specifically keyword position in Google. A word of caution: be very careful using any automated tools to run queries on Google (unless they use the official Google search APIs). For easily understandable reasons, the folks at Google are generally not very happy about such things and this could lead to some harmful consequences for your site if you're found violating their TOS. HTH
sagacity 16y ago
I believe all such automated, bulk SERP checking tools are usually frowned upon by the SEs and these are also probably in violation of the search engines' TOS. Having said that, I've seen a number of such tools come and go in the past decade or so. Since I don't use such a tool, I don't know of any currently active ones but if your check with/ask at the WebMasterWorld forums, I'm nearly sure you should be able to dig something out.
- flignats 16y ago
  There are many online services you can use to track your keyword positions without violating the T&C of the se's. They have API specifically for this purpose, you just need to find a service that uses the APIs legit.
  - storborg 16y ago
    Sorry, but I think you're wrong. Google has no APIs which will give you the rank of a given site for a given keyword. If I'm mistaken, please correct me, I and 100,000 other developers would love to use said APIs.
    - flignats 16y ago
      Let me rephrase... They have apis in place for people that use it to make the service you are looking for... not that Google has developed an API for people to use to retrieve their serps. I forget that I sometimes need to be very specific when posting on the internet...
      - rcavezza 16y ago
        They stopped services for their web search api and web search ajax api - so there's really no way of doing this anymore unless you scrape the results pages - which will probably get shut down sooner or later.
        flignats 16y ago
        In any event, there are many services out there that you can user to check your SERPs. As mentioned above, Ginzametrics and SEOmoz are two services. They don't get banned. You can also go the market samurai route if you want to, or use many other services out there that track your SERPs
flignats 16y ago
Market Samurai does a decent job of that.
chaithsc 16y ago
try spyfu.com
ddemchuk 16y ago
I use sescout.com for all of my SEO sites, it's great
rfergie 16y ago
You can get some ranking information in Google Analytics. http://yoast.com/track-seo-rankings-google-analytics/ http://yoast.com/track-seo-rankings-google-analytics/ has the basic setup, but this only tracks which page the keyword ranks on. To get the actual ranking, you need to track the "cd" parameter from the referrer string rather than the "start" parameter as is given in Yoast's example. Google doesn't put the cd parameter in all their referrer strings, but it does it often enough to be moderately useful. This method also shows you how your ranking for a keyword is variable rather than a fixed number.
deleted 16y ago
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9 points by rcavezza 16y ago

I was looking for a tool to make it easy to monitor keywords today, but came up nearly empty. What do you guys use?

il 16y ago

Ginzametrics (YC startup) seems very well reviewed.

flignats 16y ago
+1 for Ginzametrics. Also, SEOmoz has a service for serp tracking.

bee 16y ago

monitor keywords as in keywords position in search engines?

rcavezza 16y ago
Yes - sorry about being vague. Specifically keyword position in Google.
- sagacity 16y ago
  > Specifically keyword position in Google. A word of caution: be very careful using any automated tools to run queries on Google (unless they use the official Google search APIs). For easily understandable reasons, the folks at Google are generally not very happy about such things and this could lead to some harmful consequences for your site if you're found violating their TOS. HTH

sagacity 16y ago

I believe all such automated, bulk SERP checking tools are usually frowned upon by the SEs and these are also probably in violation of the search engines' TOS. Having said that, I've seen a number of such tools come and go in the past decade or so. Since I don't use such a tool, I don't know of any currently active ones but if your check with/ask at the WebMasterWorld forums, I'm nearly sure you should be able to dig something out.

flignats 16y ago
There are many online services you can use to track your keyword positions without violating the T&C of the se's. They have API specifically for this purpose, you just need to find a service that uses the APIs legit.
- storborg 16y ago
  Sorry, but I think you're wrong. Google has no APIs which will give you the rank of a given site for a given keyword. If I'm mistaken, please correct me, I and 100,000 other developers would love to use said APIs.
  - flignats 16y ago
    Let me rephrase... They have apis in place for people that use it to make the service you are looking for... not that Google has developed an API for people to use to retrieve their serps. I forget that I sometimes need to be very specific when posting on the internet...
    - rcavezza 16y ago
      They stopped services for their web search api and web search ajax api - so there's really no way of doing this anymore unless you scrape the results pages - which will probably get shut down sooner or later.
      - flignats 16y ago
        In any event, there are many services out there that you can user to check your SERPs. As mentioned above, Ginzametrics and SEOmoz are two services. They don't get banned. You can also go the market samurai route if you want to, or use many other services out there that track your SERPs

flignats 16y ago

Market Samurai does a decent job of that.

chaithsc 16y ago

try spyfu.com

ddemchuk 16y ago

I use sescout.com for all of my SEO sites, it's great

rfergie 16y ago

You can get some ranking information in Google Analytics. http://yoast.com/track-seo-rankings-google-analytics/ http://yoast.com/track-seo-rankings-google-analytics/ has the basic setup, but this only tracks which page the keyword ranks on. To get the actual ranking, you need to track the "cd" parameter from the referrer string rather than the "start" parameter as is given in Yoast's example. Google doesn't put the cd parameter in all their referrer strings, but it does it often enough to be moderately useful. This method also shows you how your ranking for a keyword is variable rather than a fixed number.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]