PDA

View Full Version : Finding a site's ranking on Google



Paul Elliott
09-24-2011, 08:51 PM
I think I have heard that there is a command one can use to determining where on Google a site is ranked for a particular keyword.

Does anyone know if/what it is?

Thank you.
Paul

vangogh
09-24-2011, 10:20 PM
There's no specific command you can use, though there are some tools you can use. You can sign up for Google and Bing's webmaster tools. Both will give you some information about where pages rank. I use a Firefox extension called Rank Checker (http://tools.seobook.com/rank-checkers/) from SEOBook. I don't use it that often though. The truth is it's a lot less important to know exactly where you rank for a given phrase than it was in the past.

Search has become personal. It's become local. What you see as the top site isn't necessarily what I see as the top site. There isn't a single exact ranking for a page for a query any more.

What's more important is to understand how much traffic you get around a certain theme of keywords and phrases and more importantly how well those keywords and phrases lead to conversions.

limekwat
09-26-2011, 02:49 PM
There are websites that do this, too. If you Google "serp checker" (or something similar), you'll get a whole list. One such website is serprush.com (http://www.serprush.com), which lets you check Google, MSN, and Yahoo to see if you are in the top 5 pages (or 10, 15, and so on up to 25).

scottish
10-13-2011, 04:19 AM
use google analytics. search for google sitewizard and it'll tell you what your websites are ranked for once you add in some conformation code to prove you own the site.

SnellExperts
11-17-2011, 10:50 AM
By rank are we referring to page rank? I was told that page rank was really quite irrelevant to the actual positioning of the site on the search engine. A lot of companies focus on page rank because they think thats the important part of SEO, but do you guys know how effective the page rank really is to positioning?

billbenson
11-20-2011, 08:51 PM
By rank are we referring to page rank? I was told that page rank was really quite irrelevant to the actual positioning of the site on the search engine. A lot of companies focus on page rank because they think thats the important part of SEO, but do you guys know how effective the page rank really is to positioning?

According to Vangogh who is our resident SEO expert, it is still part of the G algorithm along with hundreds of other factors.

This I know. The publicly displayed PR for G is not accurate. It was used for a number of years for link exchanges between sites and to determine a sites credibility between webmasters. While there may be a webmaster or two out there that still cling to PR in evaluating sites, most look at content, SERP ranking, presence of spam pages, etc in evaluating other sites.

In other words, its a pretty useless metric.

poseidon
12-13-2011, 08:13 PM
I wouldn't say google page rank is a useless metric. It is still used to determine search engine positions for billions of websites all over the world. How is it useless?

Yes, local search results changes but organic results still shows the same from people using google.com (or .uk, or .sg, etc)

A tool I use to check page rank, backlinks, etc is firefox extension. Just google seo firefox extension and you'll get plenty.

There is also a tool to see where a website is ranked on a specific keyword. It's available on seo chat website:
SEO Tools - Search Engine Optimization, Google Optimization (http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools)

I think that's what Paul is asking

TEB
02-08-2012, 01:17 PM
Use this What Page of Google Am I On? - A Free SEO Tool and Rank Tracker (http://whatpageofsearchamion.com/) if you' know the keywords you're trying to rank for. Otherwise I would suggest Google Webmaster tools.

ThirdSEO
02-09-2012, 01:40 PM
PageRank is definitely still a factor in Google's ranking algorithm, it just doesn't have as much weight as it used to. A lot of webmasters also still use PR as a factor in determining a site's value.

There are many, many free addons and plugins for Firefox and Chrome that display important SEO-related information about a site, including PageRank, Alexa traffic rankings, link follow/nofollow highlighting, keyword densities and so on. It's definitely worth taking the time to look in to some of these free tools and add a couple of them to your collection. They will make things much easier for you from an SEO standpoint.

HikeMySite
04-11-2012, 03:47 PM
I use SEO Moz's Chrome addon to see a variety of SEO stats on each website. Hope this helps!

BusinessSupply
06-27-2012, 05:18 PM
Paul - Are you trying to find out where your site or sites are ranking for a keyword or are you looking for competitor rankings? I ask for two reasons:

#1 - Van Gogh brings up a good point regarding the search results you would see versus the results that I would see. Google uses a number of huge datacenters and each runs a slightly different ranking algorithm, and then localized search results are integrated at that point before you see the end search result.

#2 - There are paid tools that you can use to track various keywords over time for either your site or for competitors sites. However, their accuracy is open for discussion based on point #1.

vangogh
06-28-2012, 11:46 PM
Yeah, I'm not sure how important it is to know your exact ranking now. I think it's more important to measure the traffic you get from a phrases or better a theme of phrases. If there are specific words and phrases that are leading to significant revenue it might be worth digging into how you rank for those specific words and phrases, but for many small businesses just tracking the traffic they get around a theme of phrases will be enough.

TanaB
06-29-2012, 06:49 AM
Van Gogh makes a really good point.

However, if your site is ranking well for its keyword using something like PageWash, then you know it will most probably be up the rankings even for local searches because Google has determined your site adds value to the public.

vangogh
07-04-2012, 03:09 PM
True. I don't want to imply that ranking well for a phrase in one location means you're not ranking well for that phrase in another. It's more that there will be some variation. Sometimes that variation can be a lot depending on the query. Other times it might be one or two positions in the results. My main point is not to get hung up on the exact location of where a page ranks for a given query. It's going to be different for different people and it's going to vary and change over time.