Are automated rank tracking tools okay?

[ARobson]

I've been thinking about using an automated search ranking measurement tool to keep an eye on our rankings - we have a big site, with varied keywords.

Are [online third-party] tools safe to use or do they go against Google's Terms and Conditions?

Do they present themselves as black-hat techniques by hiding the fact that they use automated search queries?

[edited by: tedster at 7:05 pm (utc) on Feb 22, 2012]
[edit reason] no specific tools please [/edit]

[tedster]

Welcome to the forums, ARobson.

Usually the term "black hat" refers to active manipulation to deceive Google into ranking a site higher than it normally would rank. Simply checking your rankings does not manipulate anything. So even though Google guidelines ask people not to use automated rank checking, you couldn't really call it black hat.

When a third party offers a rank checking service, the burden is on them to stay on Google's good side. The person who uses the service is not taking any risk. The main thing to avoid is building your own rank checking script and running it yourself. That has been known to create trouble.

How the big names stay on Google's good side is something like their trade secret - but you should know that you are not taking the risk when you use such a service. It's also true that many apparently different rank checkers are actually using the same core data that is provided by just a small handful of businesses.

Rank checking today is a major challenge with all the personalization, customization and localization that Google has in place. It can be very difficult to get results that you can actually depend on to make decisions. I tend to watch conversions most of all, then actual search traffic. Rankings are sometimes helpful in trouble shooting issues, but they just cannot be the main metric that they were years ago.

[aristotle]

Google's Webmaster Tools can give you some good information about recent trends in your site's Google rankings and traffic.

[Robert Charlton]

Rank checking today is a major challenge with all the personalization, customization and localization that Google has in place.

I had checked with some providers of rank checking services at PubCon LV in Nov 2011 (and I'm being purposely vague about which they were), and they were not taking localization into account. I can't imagine how they easily could... but I was also surprised that, at the time, they didn't really consider it a variable that would have an effect.

It's likely that even in a consistent location, location will have varying effects on search position, depending on what the widget is and when the searches are, on what Google might be testing and when.

If you do monitor rankings, you must also monitor traffic. You need to have a very good sense about what is actually searched, and also about what phrases convert and/or prompt engagement with your site.

Ranking on page one for ultrasonic widget tuner podunkville is not likely to be a useful measure of accomplishment... unless of course there are a lot of ultrasonic widgets in Podunkville that constantly need tuning.

[Robert Charlton]

PS - I should add that looking at traffic-only can also be a misleading metric. I've seen various cases of searches for certain terms trending down fairly sharply over time, and traffic by itself, or even traffic together with rankings, were not giving a complete picture.

Trends might be affected, eg, by social, technological, or economic conditions.

I've occasionally also used Google Correlate [google.com...] to try to diagnose more specifically what was affecting the trends we were seeing... but for a lot of searches, with the amount of data that Correlate gives you, that's really pretty hard to do.