Digital Point's Keyword Ranking Tracker
– by Ian Cook

Digitial Point Solutions has created a free, online keyword tracker which utlitizes the Google API to locate and track your ranking on Google. While the tracker doesn't compare with Webposition Gold in that it's limited to Google and in the number of searches you can do per day, it's still handy when it comes to simple tracking.

A Free Service

To use the service, just sign up for a free account on their website, enter a list of keywords and the associated URL you wish to look up, and then periodically login to check your ranking. Because the tracker uses the Google API to locate your results, you must also have a free Google API license key.

Because the Google API license limits you to 1,000 queries per day and is limited to tracking Google results only, the Keyword Ranking Tracker is not a replacement for a more robust software program like Web Position Gold, which supports all the major search engines.

After you've entered your URL and keyword pairs, visit the site each day to update your listings. The site does not automatically update your listings due to the fact that they have nearly 8,000 users and doing so automatically each night would probably piss off Google. Instead, they require you to visit and click the 'Check All' link, which then quickly updates your listings in the background.

Alternatively, you can set up a scheduled task using something like Windows Scheduler or cron to automatically login and check the results. Specific instructions are located on the tool's FAQ page.

Once you've tracked your listings for at least a few days, you'll see a report similar to the one below:

Displays Data Over Time

Clicking on the small graph icon next to each listing will open a window which shows a chart with historical ranking information, similar to the one below.

If you are tracking multiple URLs with the same keyword, each ...