How to Track Keyword Positions

[kashifkb]

Hi
Which tool is the most authentic and gives us an accurate keyword position. I have tried some tools but the results are far away from Google while searching manually. Kindly share which tools you people use to find keyword position either paid or free.

Thanks

[JesterMagic]

That's the problem with searching for keyword position as your location comes into affect which can change keyword position. When I search I use Google Chrome with a incognito window and I add gl=us to the Google.com search URL to make sure the results return are from the US (I am in Canada).

I am not sure how other tools deal with this but I currently use Google Search Console and take the average keyword position that they give.

[phranque]

at what scale?
for example how many keywords? how many locations?

[kashifkb]

@JesterMagic scale is not the issue, all I need is a keyword position teller tool that gives result closest to the google result.

[Kumar_Rahul]

Use ahref to monitor ranking.

[RedBar]

all I need is a keyword position teller tool that gives result closest to the google result.

From where, under which Google.tld?

Even Google doesn't give the same result every time because of localisation these days, even with a completely clean browser cache and purportedly using Google.com I see crazy SERPs, just how can using G.com and searching for Keyword1/2/3 deliver 10 UK results and not one USA?

Absolute madness, it's almost impossible to tell these days, I've tried proxy sites and the results were so weird it didn't even seem like Google.

I did a search in Google.pl the other day for a widget trade keyword1/2/3, the keywords were for a trade widget and NOT in English, the results were as follows:

USA - 1, 5, 8
UK - 2, 4, 6, 7
China - 3
Italy - 9

Absolutely awesome results, there was not one Polish company in the top 50 results yet there was Google's favourite US company firmly ensconced in first position, as always, ALL the sites were in the English language, not the searched for language!

[phranque]

I did a search in Google.pl the other day...
ALL the sites were in the English language, not the searched for language!

Country-specific Google sites now all searching my local country [webmasterworld.com]

[brotherhood of LAN]

It's worth noting that a lot of the big rank checking services use a Google API and they should be OK for measuring general progress with rough granularity.

For quick manual checks you can bookmark this snippet of JS which'll number the results.

javascript:(function()%20{var%20h3%20=%20document.getElementsByClassName('r');%20var%20len%20=%20h3.length;%20for(var%20rank%20=%200;rank%20<%20len;rank++)%20{var%20str%20=%20(rank%20+%201)%20+%20'%20&mdash;%20'%20+%20h3[rank].innerHTML;%20h3[rank].innerHTML%20=%20str;%20}})();

[RedBar]

Country-specific Google sites now all searching my local country [webmasterworld.com]

That may as well be however it is totally and absolutely freaking useless when I want to search in that country's own language, utterly, barking mad ... Come on Google, SMELL THE COFFEE, when I go to a non-English site I want to search that country in THEIR language and NOT see YOUR PREFERRED US suppliers.

I can feel a massive rant coming on.

[FranticFish]

If you're not doing a lot of checks then there's a manual method to get around Google's geo-targeting.

You can add a query string to the end of your Google search results that will change your location.
This query string basically consists of an 'official' (i.e. recognised by Google) location which is encoded in base 64.

You can check that it has worked by scrolling to the bottom of the page and then looking at the declared location.

If you Google '&uule=w' you should find a few blog posts on this. My top result has a link through to a post on MOZ that explains the method in detail.

As far as I can see it works down to the town level within a country.

[RedBar]

If you're not doing a lot of checks then there's a manual method to get around Google's geo-targeting.

This is driving me crazy and has rendered Google all but useless for our business. From our various global offices staff regularly search "foreign" Google.tlds for trade widgets, quite simply we can't do this now, no wonder trade fairs are back on the increase, Google has made The WWW impotent.

So much for democracy!

[RedBar]

I've managed through settings at the bottom of the Google page to force G into showing me other country results however you have to keep checking you are still in that country since the first opportunity it has the browser will revert to your own country.

Surely there must be an easier and better way than this, suggestions?

[brotherhood of LAN]

If you Google '&uule=w' you should find a few blog posts on this. My top result has a link through to a post on MOZ that explains the method in detail.

This still works.

[engine]

Surely there must be an easier and better way than this, suggestions?

Unlikely. Google doesn't want you doing this. It wants to drive everyone more local.

[JesterMagic]

The old way I would stick to incognito mode and visit google.com. Location would stay unknown for the most part but would eventually flip to my location (which I didn't notice all the time)

These days I still use incognito but I stuck gl=us in the url like https://www.google.com/search?gl=us..... and created a bookmark. Since the change my search results have always stayed within the US.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 12:20 am (utc) on Dec 8, 2017]
[edit reason] delinked example url to make it visible [/edit]

[gaurav_sha]

I prefer SEMRUSH keyword tool (Its a paid one but it give a tons of great recommendation on long tail keywords).

[RedBar]

These days I still use incognito but I stuck gl=us in the url

That doesn't work any more, well, not for me in the UK, the only method we have found is changing region settings and saving however I have to say that the results do not look right whatsoever therefore we are going to make some comparisons between our offices in various countries to see if the local country results are the same or fairly similar.

This is creating us a lot of unnecessary effort and I can foresee us losing staff simply because it is making their work take longer and more difficult.

The Verge posted this comment from Google:

Google says it’s making the change because one out of five searches “is related to location,” and the company feels it’s critical to offer local information to provide the best results.

Excuse me! 20% of searches "is related to location" ... errr, what about the other 80%?

We're being subjected to sucky results beause of the minority? Awesome G or explain what you really mean.

[engine]

Back on topic.

Which tool is the most authentic and gives us an accurate keyword position.

Unfortunately, there is no automated tool that is all of those things, despite what some may suggest. You can use some of the tools that are available, but they are only accurate as far as the tool is concerned, and do not give a true reflection of what a genuine searcher would see. The tools are helpful, but you should not rely upon them.

It's been many years since I used keyword tracking as a metric of performance.

Move away from keyword tracking and focus more on traffic and conversions.