dickbaker - 3:08 am on Sep 8, 2009 (gmt 0)

If I'm working on a particular keyword or phrase, I'll check daily or every other day to watch for progress. Sometimes the page will jump a bit.

The problem with automated ranking software is that it's showing you one datacenter out of hundreds, so you're not getting the whole picture.

I've finally reached the point where I have tens of thousands of search phrases used each month to find my site. As long as the percentages of visitors from each of the search engines remains the same, I assume that my rankings are stable. If something changes dramatically, I'll go looking for the problem (although that rarely happens).