1. Mark Nicholson

    Marketing Director at Conosco

    15 July 2010 12:30pm

    Mark Nicholson

    Does someone know the best free tool to see how a domain is ranking in google as I am getting some strange results from RankChecker.  Hope someone can help?

  2. Lawrence L

    Freelance Web Consultant at architxt.net

    19 July 2010 00:10am

    Lawrence L

    Have you tried Web CEO?

    It's not online but very good nevertheless, even the free version:

    www.webceo.com 

  3. Ashley Friedlein Staff

    CEO at Econsultancy

    23 July 2010 13:03pm

    Ashley Friedlein

    Er... Google itself? 

    I'm very wary of ranking tools. We stopped using them years ago. Primarily because every individual sees different search results these days (based on geography, language, past behaviour etc. etc.) so there is no real such think as 'rankings'. 

    Much better to look at SEO *referred traffic* I think - not least because you could rank well but get low click through. What you want is traffic not rankings I assume?

  4. Matt Owen Staff

    Head of Social at Econsultancy

    26 July 2010 10:06am

    Matt Owen

    Hey Mark, if you're after broad results have you considered Alexa? The toolbar is useful for broad rankings although as Ashley says, I would be cautious as to how much faith you put in trackers, results do tend to vary. You might also want to look at online guides like Technorati's?

  5. Brian Anderson

    Marketer at Sporting Index

    12 August 2010 11:50am

    Brian Anderson

    If you are still looking for a tool, I'd recommend Aaron Wall's free tool. You can upload an Excel file of all the keywords you'd like to track, and the tool will run a script every day to check their rankings. You can also export the data to Excel for better analysis.

    I'd agree with Ashley though; you have to take the results with a pinch of salt. The rank checker is located in one specific place, and if you are browsing under different circumstances (location, if you are logging in to Google etc) you will see different results.

    Nonetheless, over time this tool can be used to analyse trends in rankings. If I can see an overall increase in position for a category of keywords I'm targetting for a particular section of my site, I know that my link-building is heading in the right direction.

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