

Ask HN: Search Engine Rank Checking API? - apowell

I'm looking for a service that will allow me to check Google/Yahoo/Bing rankings instantly via an API.  I use Authority Labs to measure ranking trends for my most important keywords, but I'm looking for a tool that will provide one-time instant rankings for 15-30 keywords at a time.  We're constantly running these searches by hand, and automating it would save hours each month.<p>Does such a service exist?
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Travis
AFAIK, no. I looked into writing one of these, but it was right after google
changed it's search API so that it was only javascript. (at least, I couldn't
get a key to the standard backend webservice API). My impression is that
google didn't really want you to be able to do this, because better metrics on
rankings would make it easier for people to game google.

I decided against using the JS version because I'm not that good in JS, but
mostly because I saw warning everywhere that "results returned by the JS
search API are not necessarily in the same order as if you searched through
their web interface". Blew me away -- they're really returning things in a
different order?

But now I'm questioning whether or not that's just because their rankings will
change depending on who is searching -- locale, preferences, etc., will all
affect rankings. I suppose the thing to do would be to build this with their
JS Search API, and see if I can get consistent rank results (and cmp to hand
searches).

But I'm with you -- feels like this should be a tool that exists everywhere.

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hoop
Hi Travis,

As much as I'd hate to give away my secret, Google does have a RESTful API
available to its search results. Best of all, it's in JSON!

[http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0...](http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web?v=1.0&q=google+rest+api)

~~~
Travis
Most useful, thank you very much!

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hoop
This is actually something I've been doing as a side project but it's not
something I can give you access to right now. There are other "rank tracker"
services, but none of them are instant. SEOmoz has one, which will allow you
to enter up to 5 search terms, but you'll need to dish out some $$ to lift
that limit - <http://www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker>

Basically, because the search engines don't provide this data through a public
API, you end up having to use the different search APIs and crawl each one's
results for your target domain.

~~~
apowell
I checked out SEOmoz, but I didn't know they offered an ad-hoc rank checker
until you pointed it out. PRO members can check 100 ad-hoc rankings per day,
which isn't quite enough for us on a busy day (a 3,000/mo quota would likely
be plenty, but 100/day would leave us short some days).

Plus, I don't see an API for that particular tool (they have an API for other
tools), which makes it tough to integrate into our internal toolkit.

If you do release your tool to the public, please let me know. I'd be
interested in it as a subscription service or installable server-side
software.

~~~
hoop
I've taken note of your email address and I'll certainly let you know. I'm not
far off from being able to provide testing access to the data through a
RESTful API, so you should hear from me within a couple of weeks.

