Tracking search engine results is critical to SEO. Without the ability to look at historical results it is hard to track results (or show your results to clients). That is the primary weakness of the many online rank tracking tools, they provide limited historical tracking and data export abilities.
Fortunately there are some great free rank tracking software programs that let you save searches and historical results.
Search Engine Results Tracking Software
Rank Tracker EDITOR’S CHOICE
Free software tracks a URL’s rank in over 300 search engines for 100′s of keywords you specify. It graphs historic rankings and lets you easily zoom in on the period or ranking range you want. This program was recently made available for free. It is the best of the free rank tracking software programs.
Market Samurai
Market Samurai has the best rank tracking functions of anyone (aside from maybe reporting if you are doing SEO for clients). It shows results for multiple URL’s (even if they are on different domains) for a search term and has great historical graphing. Market Samurai is quite possibly the best all around internet marketing tool available and an absolute bargain for what you get. Their keyword research module is probably the best available and it is free. The rank tracking portion of Market Samurai is not free. The search engine competition module is excellent as well. It has other modules to help you choose a domain name and to research, write and publish content for your blog. You can download a trial of the full version of Market Samurai to see all the modules and use the keyword research module free forever.
Advanced Web Ranking
Excellent website ranking tracking program. Can be combined with a link reporting program. Great for providing reports to clients.
Rank Tracker Plugin
Free Firefox addon that tracks the search engine ranking for a domain for keywords you provide. You can export the historical results which is a nice feature. Use it with this reporting program to add historical tracking capabilities. You can watch a YouTube video on how to use Rank Checker here.
Google Monitor
Free software that tracks search engine results
Cute Rank
Free rank tracking software. Lets you track your search engine rank over time and to add notes which is helpful to track how well your SEO efforts are working
Online Search Engine Tracking Tools
Sometimes, when you want to do a quick check, an online tool is best option so you don’t have to open up a software program and run through a bunch of keywords you have as a saved search.
Depending on where a searcher lives, their search will go through a different Google data center and different data centers can show different results. Search results also influenced more and more by local factors. Search results are also different in different countries. Some of the online search engine result tracking tools show you search results for different data centers and different countries.
Google Data center results differ for many reasons including algorithms changes being rolled out or data centers indexing different pages. Variances in results across data centers can be and indication of future search results in other data centers.
Free tool checks the Google search rank of a web page for a keyword
Google Rankings
Free tool checks Google search rank of a web page for a keyword
Google Multiple Rankings
Free tool checks the Google ranking of a web page for up to 10 keywords
SEO Moz Rank Checker
5 free searches per day. Saves the results
Keyword Evny
Check up to 5 terms at a time and shows results in a graph
Multiple Data Center Position Checker
Search Bliss Google Dance Tool
Free tool shows search results for Google.com and five Google data centers
SEO Chat Google Dance Tool
Free tool shows search results for Google.com and five Google data centers
SERP Analytics
Free tools include: search results for different countries side-by-side, bulk PageRank, side-by-side search results for different datacenters, PageRank for different datacenters. Really cool.
Myriad Search
Free online tool exports the top 50 search results for the major search engines to a CSV file
Keyword Rankings
Shows up to ten keywords that a page is ranking for. Great for keyword research by finding out what terms a competitor ranks for.
