Finding a site's ranking on Google

[BusinessSupply]

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]

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]

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]

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.