under any keyword designation you so desire.


Say, for instance that I have a website about Fishing, right?

And it's called Chuck's Fishing Palace

but I want to see what rank my website comes in on, on Google, when I type in:

1) Palace of Fish

and/or

2) Palace of Fishing


How would such a thing be done with the google search engine for webmasters' perusal? (I love smilies, lol)

I think you need this tool http://ooyes.net/seo-tools

try this tool! prsearch.net

Even better is to not bother and do something useful instead.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Even better is to not bother and do something useful instead.

lol such sarcasm !

Woc

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Even better is to not bother and do something useful instead.

Man asked a question, not an advice for what is useful or not....
I used to check rankings with this tool:
http://googlerankings.com/mkindex.php

Well, don't you consider that telling people what is a waste of their time useful, rather than let them carry blindly on. Then having to explain somewhere further on that all their "ranking reports" are totally useless because their client is somewhere else and sees a totally different result?

Or do you like to let your clients think you are lying to them when you tell them that their page is #1 for [insert whatever phrase here] and when they check for themselves it actually nowhere at all?

Is that true Chris?

that what I see under a search feature (using the same keywords as someone else) they will see a differant ranking than I will?


you seem to know what you're doing, and i've trusted you before. But, this is something I have never heard from ANY webmaster before, so i'm curious to know why this may be The Case, you know?

http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...howtopic=17365 read post #2

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...uctuating.html
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...c-results.html
http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...n-results.html

A few years ago in the dim and distant past, we had the phenomena known at the "Google Dance" when there would be a single data push that synchronised all the datacentres at once, it lasted 3 days or so and the rankings were all over the place. When it ended, wherever your page was for the search phrase, was where it stayed for the next 3 1/2 weeks. Back then rank checking was an okay pastime because everybody saw the same thing. No use if the phrase brought no traffic at all of course but you could spend 3 1/2 weeks building up for the phrases that did work. So you did all the link begging, site tweaking etc etc and then held your breath for 3 days.

Then all of a sudden the "dance" ceased to exist and the land was in turmoil.

Actually what happened was that Google moved to a system of rolling updates, where each DC communicated with it's near neighbours and synchronised their copy of the index with each other.
The topology is probably a star pattern which minimises the propagation delays between each node, but I digress.

The upshot of this is the datacentres are rarely if ever, synchronised fully, also because each DC has it's own crawlers and it's own copy of the ranking algo not every DC is in full posession of all the data about every page that is in the complete index. So the page you are looking for may not even be in that copy of the index.
Next point is that queries are handled by different datacentres on a rotating basis so every query you make may come from a different DC, is the picture forming yet?
There is an excellent video (if you like that kind of thing) in This Thread about how the datacentres work.

Add into the mix, personalisation of search. Where, if you are logged in to a Google account, they will try to show results based on the search history of the client machine you are working from, and you have a situation where two people side by side in the same office can and do see different SERPs for the same queries. Then there is geo-location as well.

All in all not a good situation when you are telling your $1/2 million client that you are doing a wonderful job and have got them #1 rankings for lots of things. But, ermm, you'll have to trust me on that because you'll see something completely different if you actually go check.

Right. Ok then. Do you honestly think the next payment will arrive?

As the industry finally starts to mature you are seeing different, more important, metrics being used to determine the success or failure of a website.. It's no longer about being #1 on Google, and it never should have been..

What is important is driving qualified, converting, traffic to your website.. Being #1 on Google for pink fuzzy bunny slippers may be a bit of an ego boost, but what happens if that traffic doesn't convert in to sales?? Your website is successful by the ranking metric, but a miserable failure at putting food on the table..

As a group webmasters have handed control of their lives to a for profit company who's goals are not the same as theirs.. And after doing so they now complain about unfair that is..

Instead of worrying about where you rank from some term, worry about finding the phrases that convert viewers in to buyers.. Then focus on building that traffic from multiple paths, search, community, social, etc etc etc.. You will find that you have a much more stable traffic pattern and be far less reliant on the fickle whims of Google..

Whoa.

Two VERY informative/valuable posts.

Looks like you guys have done your Google homework.

No, just been doing this for longer than Google has been around.. I drove traffic before Google, and I'll drive traffic long after Google is gone..

You need to be where your customers are.. Just like the real world it's all about location.. If all of your customers are on MySpace then it doesn't make sense to look for traffic on FaceBook or Google Groups.. You find places on MySpace to get customers.. You find other places that your MySpace customers hang out and go there too.. Then you find out what your customers actually "NEED" and provide them with that too..

Use Google webmaster tools. This can be useful for you and for your "client" wherever he is...

Top search queries
The top 20 queries in which your site appeared, and the percentage of the top 20 queries represented by each search.
Top clicked queries
The top 20 from which users reached your site, and the percentage of the top 20 queries represented by each click.

try a serp tool like shoemoney.com/serps.php

first of all you can't see your site being rank in a certain keyword if you haven't done anything yet to make it rank... but to have an idea on what best keywords to use you may use google suggest and google trends...