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Personally I use WPG and try to do so in a responsible manner (i.e. no more than once a month per site; reports spread through the month; limited keywords per report; check no deeper than position 30; and run reports around 1 am California time).
Despite that I am always nervous about being pinged by Google. I also understand why Google object to the use of automated search queries.
I'm trying to steer clients away from wanting such reports. My arguement is that getting high rankings in search engines isn't the end game - what they want, and what will impact on their bottom line, is increased targeted traffic and that's what should be measured. Despite this I still find many people want WPG style reports.
How do other members deal with this?
How do other members deal with this?
Pretty much the same way. It's right along the same lines as trying show clients the flaws inherent in the "guaranteed top position" pitch. What good is a highly-ranked listing if no one clicks on it?
So we've evolved to analyzing the clients traffic for a period before we're on the job, just as simply as looking at search engine referrals. Then report the growth in that instead of the change in rankings for specified keywords.
The truth is, though, even in cases where we're not reporting them to clients we do run rank checks for internal use -- taking a "conservative" approach pretty similar to yours. But generally only for a short period of time, maybe a couple of months, after which we're working more on fine tuning what's already in place and a manual check of just a couple of serps serves the purpose.
Don't use the programme myself, but I think I have seen Googleguy say something to the effect that they have means of checking that sort of thing before penalising anyone. I imagine they check IP numbers or something
Webrank run the reports from their servers. I wonder if this is a way of getting around the risk of running reports and having your IP blocked by Google. Anyone tried Webrank and got comments?
Knowing the value of watching logs there's a lot of information they could glean from that, that I wouldn't care to give them.
I still like to check by hand to get the full picture of who's doing what and how, but it's become cumbersome time-wise.
[edited by: Marcia at 10:49 pm (utc) on Aug. 21, 2002]
Now, if you are running reports for your clients, be very careful. I've seen sites get whacked with PR0 and based on the advertising on their site, they were running WPG reports. I've even heard rumor that certain Google folks might even request a report from those who offer it from their sites. Once they get it and see that you queried Google, bye-bye.
I remember seeing a comment from someone recently that said there was no reason to run reports. The clients don't care about the positions, its the ROI they are looking at. If there are visitors coming to the site and sales transactions are taking place, then most are happy. You can pretty much be assured that if your stats are showing visitors for specific search terms, you have top 20 positions for those referrers (9 out of 10 times).
Pay more attention to the number of visitors, the pages they are visiting, the length of time they are spending and whether or not the visitor converts. If its not an e-comm site, then conversion may not be an issue.
Just look at your stats the day you launch. Look again at 30, 60 and 90 days. If the report shows bar graphs and you don't see an upward trend, then there are problems. Unless of course you are targeting a very niche market and the volumes of traffic are not there, then you can expect flat spots after a certain time period. There is only so much traffic to be had for any given industry.
Thanks
-Go to Preferences in Google and change "Number of Results per page" to maybe 50 or 100.
-Then do the search.
-Then use the browser's find function to locate your URL on the results page.
You won't see what page your site is on, but it gives a rough idea
Hope thats helpful,
Paul
I use a simple dial-up account to check my pos with AgentWebRanking LE.
Unfortunately there are some who do not know the pitfalls of using WPG. There is an option for URL verification when running ranking reports, or at least that is what I recall. If that option is checked, you just beamed yourself up.
Yes and no. A competitor running WPG reports could include your website URL for verification - doesn't necesarily have to be the site owner running the report.
Obviously if the report is being run from the same ip address as the website then that's pretty conclusive evidence.
I use a small app I found written in VB that uses the Google API that your allowed up to 1000 searches a day..
Given the API license keys are available it surprises me that WPG haven't struck a deal with Google to use these. The fact is that whilst products like WPG exist people will use (and, unfortunately, some abuse) automated searches which causes grief for Google. So surely if API keys were used by WPG Google could charge WPG for the resources searches tie up and also discount WPG searches from their search calculations.
Is this too obvious or am I missing something? Can Googleguy or someone please explain.
The money goes into a tracking system where we can add up all the cents and redistribute to the search engines in appropriate amounts each month.
Advantages:
Free software - just pay-to-play
Every reason for search engine to make it easy for the software, and make results reliable (Coz they get money!)
Every chance of pleasing advertisers by NOT having adverts displayed it electronic searches
Every chance that we could check rankings around the world from a "local" perspective.
Disadvantages:
Nobody from the engines got back to me. Are there disadvantages?
Give me backing from Google, Fast and AV and that's it - we have a solution to please all.
(This idea was mine by the way - when someone goes pinching it... so if they do they better give me preferential rates!) :)
[edited by: Receptional at 11:04 am (utc) on Aug. 30, 2002]
I wouldn't mind pay Google and other SE's for the right to query their databases.
It could be a Google API license for commercial use or they could charge you and I allow you to use WPG from a given IP.
Torben
Easy and cheap access to 100's or 1,000's of serps would make it easy for spammers to optimize sites for ranking - google started out being so good because content was the key (not that I think the index is spam free!). Who knows, someone with that much data could probably crack the algo.
I totally agree that there always should be some spam control but right now people are afraid of checking just a few keywords on Google and that just stupid.
If people pay for a license to query Google for a commercial purpose Google can eaysily track each account and stop any abuse.
Most of Googles algo is PageRank. I'm guessing about 75%
Well, there's a topic for a never ending thread :) I'd say that's a little high.
Page rank is "how many links" combined with "how important" those links are. Even including your incoming link's anchor text (not part of PR), I'd say you're in the neighborhood of 50% at best.
Let's say you've got a page with a couple incoming links from PR9's. But those incoming links are images, no anchor text. You'd probably have a PR8. But if you've not properly optimized your non-PR factors, I'll bet my optimized PR4 pages will easily beat you.
rmjvol
Well, there's a topic for a never ending thread. I'd say that's a little high.
I think it's a little high, too, but also that it's not really relevant. If PageRank were 100% of the formula, people would still want to check their positions in the serps for various keywords.
How much influence PageRank has doesn't affect how much people want that #1 spot.
Fair enough, but since we know it isn't 100%, those with 1,000's of automatically downloaded serp's would have a huge advantage for optimizing the content component of their rankings.
