Monthly keyword position record keeping

Efficient method to keep track

[Marcia]

How do you guys keep records on the positions for keywords, so it's easy to compare during and after the update? By URL, by keyword, and how about graphing changes over a period of months?

[nancyb]

Oh, Marcia, what a good question! I hope you get some good answers. What I do is so finger tapping intensive I usually give up before I have any meaningful data to compare.

<added> should have said what I do - copy/paste to a spread sheet.

[Paully]

There are quite a few tools available on the net.

While lurling for quite some time, I have noticed that the mods dont like urls posted here. Or I would provide a very good tool.

Try a google search on, google dance tools www2 www3, and look a few down ;). Use the pure http ones, no d/l's!

[Marcia]

No Paully, for checking position, that I do by hand so I can see who else is there and what they're doing.

I'm talking about keeping your own running records for your own tracking purposes. I'm looking for a better way than how I've been doing it.

[Paully]

Marcia, sorry for the misunderstanding.

For keeping records, I actually use a simple Excel Spreadsheet. Works for me. I also have graphs set up, on all my favorite keywords, and I track some of my competition this way :).

Whats good about those tools I mentioned earlier, is that some provide a #ranking, which helps a zillion in keeping the records you are talking about.

Hope that helps.

[Marcia]

>use a simple Excel Spreadsheet

Do you keep all the keywords, different search engines and running figures for the months together in one? I'm pondering the options for layout with only rows and columns to deal with. That's two, and I'm trying to figure the best way with more variable.

[nancyb]

ideally a db would probably work the best so you could manipulate the data but it has been a long time since I did that kind of stuff. Besides suggestions for what to use, and how to layout, I'd like some suggestons for how to get the data into the tool - my fingers have more calouses than when I played guitar ;)

[Paully]

Mine goes like this:
--- UpdateDate1 -- UpdateDate2
KW1 Position# -- Position#
KW2 Position# -- Position#
KW3 Position# -- Position#

--I use this as a template for different SE's.

**Where I track Competetors It goes like this:

-- --- --- --- --- UpdateDate1 ----- --- --- --- --- -- -----------------------UpdateDate2 --- --- ---- --- ---
KW1 My Position -- Comp1 Pos. -- Comp2 Pos. ------- My Position -- Comp1 Pos. -- Comp2 Pos.
KW2 My Position -- Comp1 Pos. -- Comp2 Pos. ------- My Position -- Comp1 Pos. -- Comp2 Pos.
KW3 My Position -- Comp1 Pos. -- Comp2 Pos. ------- My Position -- Comp1 Pos. -- Comp2 Pos.

Geez, that was alot of -'s I wish I knew how to use the <tr>'s here :)

[Paully]

nancyb,

If you want an automated product, there are plenty out there on the market with full DB history support, beautiful reports, etc.

There is a major problem with these tools, Google frowns upon on them. Thus, I use few keywords, and manually edit a few fields in a relativly small spreadsheet. Which actually is the way to go when using statistical numerical data, graphing, etc.

[bcc1234]

Marcia, use a relational database :)

[nancyb]

Thanks, Paully, but no I don't want an automated product! Been there, done that - bad move!

I do the checking for positioning by hand also, what I want is something that will 'lift' the data from the page (either from my browser or the save to my hard drive) which would include the title and description. Is this something grep could do? I obviously know nothing about grep 'cept the name.

[nancyb]

gosh darn, I haven't heard that term (relational db) in almost 15 years. I used one of the first ones available commercially and I just figured there was something even better by now. Is there a freebie, or cheapie, out there?

[bcc1234]

gosh darn, I haven't heard that term (relational db) in almost 15 years. I used one of the first ones available commercially and I just figured there was something even better by now. Is there a freebie, or cheapie, out there?

Something better? Well, object-oriented relational, that's about as good as it gets.

Where have you been for the past 15 years? :) I want to go there too.

If you need a freebie, check out postgresql.

[nancyb]

I left to become a jeweler, but you may not want to come as the $s are far less ;). I'll check out postgresql. Thank you! I often want a db for something and most of the ones I used were behemoth in size and cost.

[edited by: nancyb at 1:03 am (utc) on Sep. 23, 2002]

[Marcia]

If you need a freebie, check out postgresql

Does that run on Windows 98? I've got MS Access, though I've never used it.

I know what relational is, but never heard of object-oriented relational. A database might be the best solution after all, possibly set up to record what changes were made that caused changes in ranking, if it's got that capability.

[nancyb]

Marcia, you can pretty much use a db to give you any info you want, when and how you want it - as long as the data is in there and you set the db up right to churn out what you want. The benefit of the db over a spreadsheet is also the relative ease of adding more types of data without having to redo everything, but if you don't plan the db right it could end up being far more work than you want to bother with.

I just downloaded postgreSQL but it may be more than my system can handle unless I get rid of a lot of stuff or add more disk space. I am excited about finding this though - I can think of a bunch of ways I would like to look at kw, positioning and log file data that I haven't been able to do. Now, if my system will handle this all I have to do is find the time to learn this software and then plan a db - wheeee I'm excited.

[rmjvol]

When I was beta testing what is now a current commercial software, I suggested adding the capability to manually enter rankings for Google into the reports. Idea being use their automation for SE's that didn't mind automated checking yet having all SE's in the same nice report. They just stated it was my decision to use or not use their automation as they properly emulate a browser. They didn't seem to care about G's TOS nor my concern.

That's when my high opinion of the software started dropping.

It would seem to be a *very* desirable feature to be able to do this. Any body know if the other players like WPG2 or the TopDogs can handle this?

[edited by: Marcia at 7:47 am (utc) on Sep. 26, 2002]
[edit reason] removed specific product name [/edit]

[sun818]

Hi Marcia - I created an Access DB in 10 minutes. Create a table with all the fields you plan on using like:

record_id
update_date
search_engine
keyword
company
position

Plug in some dummy data and use copy/paste to duplicate. Then one you have a decent sample size, say 100 rows, use the Tools : Analyze : Table function. Access will go ahead and split out your single table in multiple tables and bulid a query with all the correct lookups. For all the security holes MS software has, they do provide some useful tools with their apps.

Once you have the data, you can export your queries to Excel for pretty graphs.

[martin]

You don't need something with the power of PostgreSQL or Oracle at all. A lightweight database like MySQL can do for this type of stuff.

It also runs natively on Windows compared to POSIX emulation with PostgreSQL.

The MySQL license is a bit strange, if you use MySQL with a webserver on Unix you don't pay, if you compile MySQL from sources you don't pay, otherwise you pay. There was something like a free or shareware version for Windows too, I think with debugging compiled in so it runs 20-30% slower.

These are your two tables:

query_id
search_engine
keyword
company

id
query_id (foreign key, references the other table query_id)
update_date
position

[secommando]

To answer rmjvol's question, TopDog stores only the current and most recent search rankings in its project files. You can, however, export the data and have it append to a comma-separated (CSV) text file. To my knowledge, WebPosition does not retain previous ranking positions, either.

Search Engine Commando retains all position rankings for each search you run, and that data is available for export. We're adding new features to do more with the data (you can guess what!). Your suggestion for inserting position values manually into a project is good and I've added it to our list of potential features for the next release.

-- David