Search Engine Position Checker

How dat work?

[rycrostud]

There's definitely no simple, one-line answer to this one, but any hints or suggestions would be v cool.

I would like to write my own set of PHP scripts that would enable me to check the position of a given URL in a search engine based on some keywords. You know the kinda thing. There's quite a few about, like on JimTools.

I just don't understand the theory behind it, or infact what the theory is, come to mention it!

I'm having difficulty finding any info on this.

Any idea where I might start or some search terms to look for or perhaps some PHP tutes?

[sugarkane]

This is actually a lot simpler than you might think... if you've got a handle on regular expressions ;)

In it's simplest form:

- Analyse the URL of a SERP to decipher what format the query is passed to the engine, plus any other parameters (results per page, starting point etc)
- Construct a valid URL using your own search terms
- Collect the SERP using something like fopen() - I'm not 100% on which function, as I do this kind of thing in Perl (LWP) rather than PHP
- Parse the page you've collected, using regular expressions to find URLs in the SERP
- Check if the URL you're looking for matches up

That, in a nutshell, is it. The tricky part is in constructing a regex to parse out the URLs - this can get quite complicated eg my one for AV is something like

@<a.*?rn true;">(.*?)</a>(.*?)<span class=x>\s*?URL: (.*?)\s*?&#@gi

[rycrostud]

Thanks geeza. That was kinda what I was thinking, but I would've probably done it a really daft way.

I'll have a play.

[KodeKrash]

Sugarkane has a perfectly good answer, and I have an alternate answer:
RegExp are not always needed. Fuzzy logic can handle it without using RegExp methods. But then, Fuzzy logic is more complex to understand and write than are RegExp.

[rycrostud]

Fuzzy logic is a new one on me. Do you know of any good PHP tutorial sites that cover this topic?

[KodeKrash]

I don't know of any language specific tutorials on fuzzy logic, and not many sites that deal with it in general either. Just do some RTFM on artificial intelligence - it will get you in the right direction. AI is one step farther than fuzzy logic, which is one step farther than programatic logic.

[rycrostud]

Now I'm scared. :(

[Tapolyai]

Don't worry about it! sugarkane gave you the exact answer...

Grab the page with the right URL, strip the code, find your URL.

Fuzzy logic sounds awesome except it's like hunting a pigeon with a 12 gauge shotgun at 12 inches... Ever seen what that does to the pigeon?

[KodeKrash]

How about a dove with a 10 gauge at about 20 ft? About the same. :o)