Chico_Loco - 1:05 pm on Sep 15, 2009 (gmt 0)

I agree with Bill... rank checking is something of a silly thing. Being number 1 for term means nothing unless it drives traffic, and those stats you get from an analytics package.

However some of my clients demand it (even though I try to educate them otherwise), and if it has to be done to retain their business, then it will get done.

I have a script that does one query for each keyword set to have 100 results-per-page. It pumps the entire search results into a database so that we can do whatever with it i.e. get retroactive or check for competitors as well.

The downside of using 100 results-per-page is that the rankings are usually shown as worse than the really are, owing to the additional indented listings that come with the higher results-per-page setting. This I actually consider a positive sometimes, since it's the "pessimistic view" and things are usually better when the client searches for themselves.

The upside of using 100 results-per-page is that the script requires less hits than even checking 30 rankings at 10 results-per-page, so I never get banned by Google for being an automated program - plus the whole report takes less time to complete.

BTW... my company released that program into the public domain.