How do I find the keywords that send traffic to my site indexed in the
search engines? i.e. is there a quick online reference/checker similar
to the allinurl: command which checks the pages listed in Google for
example?

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Clarification of Question by surco-ga on 20 Feb 2004 11:36 PST

Thank you for your response. Apologies, I should have explained a
little more. What I am unable to acheive using webtrends stats is the
position of a given keyword in a search engine ie is there a tool
which will tell me what position it is within the s/e's

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Request for Question Clarification by robertskelton-ga on 20 Feb 2004 12:11 PST

There are tools that can do as you ask, however using them can
negatively affect your search engine ranking. Google say:

"Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc"
://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Such programs put extra strain on their servers, for no benefit to the
search provider. They also negatively affect the data of how often
someone searches for a particular phrase. Often webmasters use such
programs every hour...

I can supply a list of such programs for you, but would definitely
suggest that you don't use them.

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Clarification of Question by surco-ga on 21 Feb 2004 04:22 PST

We wish to check the rankings approximately once a month as we do this
by hand at the moment for our site and that of clients who we do web
positioning work for (and supply a monthly summary report). I can
understand the Google policy for those who abuse such activity but as
you can imagine it is a laborious process by hand but would be
interested to know of the programmes you refer to as it seems this
infrequent use (in comparison to the abusive use you refer to)could be
possible without detremental effect - maybe???

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Clarification of Question by surco-ga on 25 Feb 2004 07:27 PST

We do use Web Position Gold and on checking with the person who uses
this on our behalf cannot seem to find that function. Are you able to
advise further?

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Request for Question Clarification by robertskelton-ga on 25 Feb 2004 12:57 PST

If you mean checking the AOL results instead of Google, I was assuming
that the option is still available, as it was a year ago.

If you are refering to "searching by hand", I mean just that - going
to http://google.com and searching for each search term, one at a
time.

The normal way is to check your referer logs. Either in their raw
state, or via a stats program, they should be available from your
hosting service.

Although Google might take notice on which URLs in the search results
are clicked on, and for which keywords, they do not in any way make
such information available to the public.

I investigated the alternatives and I am convinced that WebPosition
Gold is the best tool for your purposes. Sites have been blacklisted
by Google for using it, however the only conceivable way Google could
do this is by matching IP addresses - which means they can only catch
you if you run the program from your server.

To be doubly safe, check your ranking at AOL instead of Google. AOL
results come from Google, and are virtually always the same.

By hand is still an option. What I do is set results to 100 per page
(in preferences), and use CTRL-F to search for my site's URL in the
result page for each keyword. If you rank worse than 100 it is the
same as ranking 10,000th - nobody will see it. Doing it this way you
should be able to check a keyword every 10-15 seconds.