How to Find Your Site’s Position in Google Search Results
Some readers asked me how I could tell where my site ranked for a given keyword. It’s actually very easy to do with the right tools. There are two ways.
The first is to use my free Rank Checker tool. It’s a desktop application where you feed it a bunch of URLs and a bunch of keywords and it tells you which URLs rank for which keywords. I released it as a “mystery tool”, and I might still charge for it, so get it now while it’s free…
Anyhow, the other way to do it involves these steps:
- Start a copy of Firefox.
- If you haven’t already, install the SEO Tools for Firefox add-in. (You’ll have to restart Firefox.)
- Go to the Google home page and click the Preferences link. Set the preferences to display 100 results per page and save the preferences.
- Make sure the SEO Tools plugin is enabled — the “SEO” icon in the bottom right of the status bar should be in color.
- Search Google for the keyword/phrase of interest. You’ll see a bunch of extra information at the bottom of each item in the Google results page. These are inserted automatically by the SEO Tools extension. Right now you’re mainly interested in the position, i.e. “#1″, “#2″, etc.
- Hit CTRL+F to bring up the Firefox search box. Type in the start of the URL you’re interested in tracking. (If I want to see what position this blog is in, I just look for memwg.com.) After typing in the URL (or partial URL), click the “Next” button immediately to the right of the search bar.
- If your URL is in the results, you’ll jump immediately to it and see what position you’re at.
- If not, go to the next page of the results and click the Next button again. Repeat this process as many times as necessary until you either find your site or run out of results.
The key is the 100 results per page setting — it makes the process much less tedious.
Don’t forget that the results you see are dependent on which Google site you’re using, what language you’re targeting, etc.
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40 Responses to “How to Find Your Site’s Position in Google Search Results”
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Thank for share this tips. It’s very useful for me.
Thanks a lot for posting such an information. It is always difficult to find where your site is with online tools. This post give all we need to do it properly.
Have a great day.
Ta for the SEO FF plugin it’s great! I’d never heard of it before
I used this article and found the search results. they are different for different demographics. When i used .com I got different results from other extensions.
At last a useful plugin for FF! thank you very much, it makes SEO a lot easier!
The SEO Tools plugin is indeed a great one. And, yes, rankings change depending on which Google site you start at.
great article!
I hate to bring up a competing product in your thread, Eric (even if they’re both free), but I use the RankChecker plugin for Firefox (from the same folks who brought you SEO for Firefox).
http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/
Just be sure to use the built-in delay function. I’ve gotten nailed by Google a couple times lately for “too many searches”.
I still wish there was an easy, cheap tool (I’d be happy to pay if it did what I needed) that you could just start up and come back an hour later and have it done with checking all your stuff. Unfortunately, this tool is still site-by-site…but it’s the fastest solution I’ve found.
Chuck, have you tried my Rank Checker tool? I think it meets your requirements. It’s a desktop app. You give it a list of keywords and a list of URLs and it tells you which ones rank for which keywords. It has built-in delays and proxy support, too, so it won’t get you banned…
Eric
Cool tool. Works great! Thanks!
Great blog, although I know so little about SEO. I think I’m making progress, and than I realize how little I know!
Whoa! Thanks for the tool. I used to check for various keywords. some ranked me 3 and some 30.. haha.. i am hitting the right areas.
Eric,
I did try it, yes. As you remember, I had a lot of trouble getting it installed initally. It’s possible that I didn’t give it enough of a chance when I finally got it working.
I tried to re-download it, but I’m already signed up for your newsletter, so I can’t get back to the download information.
I sent another copy to Chuck and he’s given me some great suggestions as to how to improve it.
Does Page rank matter when we are concentrating on traffic? I have seen some pages that are low page ranked, but it gets good traffic. So i am confused about the relation.
Sounds interesting. I was looking for this tool for a while. Thanks!
PageRank is essentially a measure of how popular your site is in terms of links — the higher the PR, the more links. There’s not necessarily a direct correlation to traffic. You can have high PR pages with little traffic… although in general the really high PR pages do have significant traffic.
It is easier to find and save time to search from 100 sites. But, each time we search any from google, it will appear 100 sites long list. I feel this is not really convenient. I just subscribed to the “mystery tool”. When are going to release this tool? Can’t wait to try it out.
Thanks for the tip! I didnt realised it was this easy to check!
I find this info and tool very effective for me, thanks for sharing a great info.
Ohh wow! I just subscribed to your Rank Checker Tool. I just hope it will be available soon. The steps you provided are very useful, practical and detailed. It’s very helpful not only for those Seo guys who are checking their ranking but also for individual who are mainly using Google for researching. I just hope it won’t slows down the loading of page compared to just asking for the top 10 results.
I’ve been using http://link.ezer.com/tools/google_serps_rank_checker.asp so you might as well check it out if you like.
Hey Thanks for the nice guide on finding my position in top100. Already subscribe and satisfied
Thank you SO much for this - I was looking for info on how to do this and I came across your blog on google, great site!
So that means, even without PR, we can still get good amount of traffic?
Yes, you can still get traffic with only a few links. A popular link on Digg will send you lots of traffic… a link in a high-traffic forum can also do that…
This is a great tool, something I am now going to be using a lot more. It was always tedious to see where I ranked in Google, but this makes it a TON easier.
But that isn’t targeted traffic right Eric? its just any traffic coming which generally doesn’t benefit you in terms of income. correct me if i am wrong.
You mean Digg? It rarely does anything to your income in the short term, yes. But it can still be beneficial in exposing your site to others and generating longer term awareness and traffic.
Great tool for people like me! Time to do some analysis for my own site.
Used it, works great. Thanks for sharing.
What a great tip, I’ve had the firefox SEO tool for some time but never thought to use it in this way. I can see me using this a lot to watch my rankings.
Do you mind if I reproduce this tip on my blog, with a backlink of course. I am sure my readers would be interested to see it.
Sure, Stephen, go ahead… I’d appreciate good anchor text in the link back, of course!
Eric
very useful tool.
thanks for sharing
http://www.passiveadsenseincome.com
I think these are both great tools! I have found Firefox has been a great browser for using these tools on the web.
Thanks for the great SEO tip. I sometimes really get frustrated when I have to find my site in a list of about 10 thousand sites for a certain keyword. This will reduce my job a lot. Thanks again.
I’ve been trying forever to figure out how to do this. Thanks it helps me view it without having to click through every single number.
Thanks
Very valuable tips for beginners like me. I hope that the SEO Firefox add-on will help me. Thanks.
Thanks for the great plugin. I was having a hard time figuring out some of my sites position in google and this plugin solves that problem.
Before reading this post it was really difficult for me to check the site’s position in Google search result but after reading your post it is quite easy for me to check the position of my site in the search result.I appreciate you for the both ways described in your post for such purpose.
Try SEO Quake and Firebug. Both very helpful.