Rank checking it seems is still one of those sore spots among SEOs – where there are some tools that work great certain things but not others. I’m doing some heavy keyword research (1000′s of keywords) for an ecommerce site and need something that can process rankings quickly.
So earlier today I went on over to Google Plus, where I’ve been having more luck at getting some interaction lately, and asked for people’s recommendations on rank checkers for SEO.
WOW! The feedback was phenomenal, even some folks I look up to like Wil Reynolds and Tom Critchlow chimed in. Below is, what I think, is the ultimate list of rank checkers with some pros and cons. I’ve also include what I look for in a rank checker. And don’t worry, I give complete thanks to everyone who pointed them out to me!
Features I Look For In A Rank Checker
“On-demand” vs Campaign
This is the biggest categorical difference to me, in all rank checkers – that is, whether they allow on-demand rank checking (you can run one-off’s) or campaign based rank checkers. For on-demand ranking checking, I am using it for things like keyword research or competitive research; ie I am trying to figure out what the keywords should be. For campaign based rank checking, this is obviously to track this important KPI over time.
Volume
The ability to run hundreds if not thousand of keywords is important, especially if you’re working on larger sites. Oftentimes I’m in the middle of keyword research and would like to judge search volume against rankings and all the other metrics, so I’d like to run those hundreds of words through and get the volume back into the spreadsheet quickly.
Exportable To Excel / CSV
Goes without saying! Gimme that data in a spreadsheet!
Cost
This is last because, well, if a tool is good enough and saves me time, its usually VERY much worth the cost. Cost for SEO tools usually makes up for its self quite easily – so while cost is a factor, its not a big one.
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The Ultimate List of Rank Checkers
SEO Book Rank Checker Plugin
On-Demand vs Campaign: On demand, although I believe you can set up scheduled reports
Volume: 100 at a time
Export: Yes
Price: Free
Website: tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/
Via: Dan Shure
SEOmoz PRO Campaign
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 300, 1000 or 5000
Export: Yes
Price: $99, $199 or $499 /month (but you also get their entire suite of software, training videos etc)
Website: www.seomoz.org/features
Via: Dan Shure
Raven Tools
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 1000 or 2500 (.06 cents extra per word)
Export: Yes
Price: $99, $249 / month
Website: raventools.com/internet-marketing-tools/serp-tracker/
Via: Dan Shure
NOTE: Raven’s rank tracker is powered by Authority Labs.
Microsite Masters
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 10-5,000
Export: All paid versions
Price: Free-$299 / month
Website: www.micrositemasters.com
Via: Melissa Rubin
Sistrix
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: Not sure
Export: Yes
Price: By Request (free trial available)
Website: www.sistrix.com/toolbox/
Via: Alessio Madeyski
Search Metrics
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 100-500+
Export: Yes, with credits
Price: $398-$1,325+ / month
Website: www.searchmetrics.com/en/seo-software/
Via: Alessio Madeyski
SEO Serp Chrome Extention
On-Demand vs Campaign: On Demand
Volume: 1 (but multiple sites for each keyword)
Export: Yes
Price: Free
Website: Chrome Extension Store Page
Via: Alessio Madeyski
Authority Labs
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 100-unlimited
Export: Lots you can do with the API
Price: $24 – $450 / month
Website: authoritylabs.com/tour/
Via: Dustin Thompson / Wil Reynolds
Bright Edge
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign?
Volume: Not sure
Export: Not sure
Price: Not sure
Website: www.brightedge.com/seo-management
Via: Anthony D. Nelson
Google Docs / ImportXML
On-Demand vs Campaign: On Demand
Volume: 50 (limit to importxml commands in one G-Doc)
Export: Yes, already in spreadsheet
Price: Free
Website: This post by Tom should get you started.
Via: Dan Shure / Tom Critchlow
RankRanger
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 50 – 1500
Export: Yes
Price: $19 – $249 / month
Website: www.rankranger.com/?p=features
Via: Marc Levy
Advanced Web Ranking
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: Not sure, anyone?
Export: Yes
Price: $99 – $599 / month
Website: www.advancedwebranking.com/features.html
Via: Marc Levy via this article on rank checkers
Traffic Travis
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: Unlimited
Export: Not sure
Price: Free
Website: www.traffictravis.com
Via: Tim Capper
WebPosition
On-Demand vs Campaign:
Volume: 50 – 10,000,000
Export: Yes
Price: $29 – $69 + extra for usage (premium) / month
Website: www.webposition.com
Via: Benjamin Beck
Market Samurai
On-Demand vs Campaign: Both
Volume: Unlimited (I think)
Export: Yes
Price: $149 (no monthly cost)
Website: www.marketsamurai.com
Via: Dan Bochichio
Conductor
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: Unlimited
Export: Yes
Price: By Request (free demo)
Website: www.conductor.com
Via: JenMarie Robustelli
getStat
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign (although it says ‘real time’)
Volume: Unlimited
Export: Yes
Price: By Request
Website: getstat.com/wp/features/
Via: Mike King
SEO Diver
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 50 keywords each domain / 3 domains (.05 cents extra word)
Export: Yes
Price: $99 – $129 / month
Website: www.seodiver.com/keyword-monitor
Via: Seodiver! (Thanks!)
ZoomRank
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: Unlimited
Export: Yes (email delivery too)
Price: $7 – $25 / month
Website: www.zoomrank.com
Via: Corey Eulas
Rank Tracker (duh!)
On-Demand vs Campaign: Both it Seems
Volume: I think unlimited
Export: Premium Only
Price: Free – $249.75 (one time cost)
Website: www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/features.html
Via: Logan Thompson
RankTrackr
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 20-500
Export: All levels
Price: $9-133/month
Website: http://ranktrackr.com/
Via: Alaj at RankTrackr
Let’s Keep This List Going!
Please drop a recommendation in the comments! I hope to add to this list, not only more software choices but some other key factors. Also, you may notice some info is missing, or I wasn’t sure, please feel free to fill me in and I’ll update it!
UPDATE: I also came across this discussion in the Moz Q&A about rank checking software – valuable read as well!
Thanks to EVERYONE who chimed in earlier on Google Plus!!
Great list Dan! Do you ever get different rankings for the same keyword on the different tools?
@benjamin – we definitely see that every so often, atm not only are we seeing different ranking positions but different URLs displaying in some cases. Rank checking is so difficult in todays SERPs, simply too much going on to ever be 100% accurate. Rankings can change from minute to minute, different results based on search location, personalization, G+ etc…
Great post Dan, enjoyed being involved.
Thanks Marc! I really appreciate your involvement!
Thanks Ben! I have not seen much difference actually. Local search is where it gets tricky of course, that is where I tend to see it different. But I honestly haven’t branched out that far with rank checkers yet (thus this post), so I am curious to see how they handle it differently.
SEO DIVER
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 50 / 3 domains (.05 cents extra per word)
Period: monitoring on daily basis
Export: Yes (xls & csv)
Price: $99 – $129 / month
Website: http://www.seodiver.com/keyword-monitor
Thanks! I’ve added you in above
Campaign (so flexible)
Volume: As high as you can go
Period: Daily
Export: Yes, e-mail delivery automatically too.
http://www.zoomrank.com
$7 – $25/mo
Thanks Corey! I added ZoomRank above… I’m glad you commented, I’d forget the name and you just told me last week.
Spyranks
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 10-unlimited
Export: Yes
Price: $2.5 – $300 / month
Website: http://www.spyranks.com
Great roundup Dan, had not heard of a number of those.
My favorite inexpensive one: SheerSEO – a ton of different price points, checks both rank and PageRank values, includes some new keyword density analysis. Skips tracking competitors which I agree with – who has time to look at them anyway – just worry about your own ranks.
getSTAT is definitely the best one out there, bar none, for position tracking *at scale*, if you need to track multi-thousands of keywords it’s the way to go.
Also – for free (!) – the Bulk Rank Checker at Search Engine Reports – great when you want to check a few terms out really quick without setting anything up:
http://searchenginereports.net/
- Ted
Another good one;
SeeUrank :
On-Demand vs Campaign: Both
Volume: unlimited
Export: Yes
Price: 39$ to 69$ /month
Website: http://en.yooda.com
Powerfull tool ! Wonder why it’s so unknown ??
thanks for sharing this list, Dan, super-helpful
How about adding a category for usability? For example, which would be best for a small business owner who just wants to see where things stand?
Thanks Suzanne! Yes, I was going to fill out the list with more categories soon. Perhaps a small/medium/large type rating would help. I was also thinking of adding things like; proxy, competitive domain tracking, report generating, etc… great idea thanks!
-Dan
Maybe do another post (or series) highlighting the best tools for which types of users. Starting with SMBs might be good for business. They may start tracking and realize they need more help. Just a thought!
If you need to get rank via an API, you can use Raven Tools (API docs at https://api.raventools.com/docs/ )
If you need some pre-written PHP code, I shared how to build a Google rank checker at http://www.ericnagel.com/resources/google-rank-checker-api.html
Great list Dan, glad I finally “caught up” on my reading (I’m only 5 days behind now!) I hadn’t even heard of 3 or 4 of these, definitely good to have new options available for something as touchy as rank checking, especially for those clients who are extra… “fun” and want multiple layers of checks in place.
Thanks! That’s a great point, sometimes multiple sources of data are needed, so good to have plenty of options!!
This is the ultimate list. Raven Tools and SEOmoz is all you really need.
Here’s one for the list:
http://sescout.com/
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign (although it updates hourly so if you have free slots on it and patience you could use it for on demand)
Volume: Varies according to price plan, 10 keywords/10 domains for free. Up to 1500 keywords/1500 domains on the top level package.
Export: Yes – both to .pdf for pretty reporting and .csv for analysis.
Price: Free to $99.97/month
Website: http://sescout.com
Features vary quite a lot depending on price package to best to head over and check it out.
I just dropped seout.com the rankings are very accurate but the support is next to non-existent. It would not be a big deal if they could make the reports work. The PDF and email reports do not work… As an agency I can’t use this because of the lack of reports.
Dan,
Thanks for the list.
You may want to update Market Samurai listing. They will soon introduce a monthly pricing for rank checks. Currently you can check from your system (Too many keywords and you’ll get a temporary ban).
What about the good old old Free Monitor for Google? It’s been around for a decade and it still suffices for average webmasters.
Similarly there is CuteRank which has even more advanced features. For those who only check their own site’s positions they are OK.
Then there is Web CEO. It has even more features and had a free version as well last time I checked (years ago).
Nice Dan.
We use several of these. One advantage of Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) is the ability to specify location searches (emulating browser location settings). That combined with proxy servers provides more accurate local reporting.
Interesting list. I built my own tool for it in Filemaker Pro that runs 24 hours a day in an eternal loop. To check the 800 phrases I currently check, I needed 10 proxy IP-addresses for it to not run in to Google’s automatic search algorithm and some randomizing of times.
With a bit of tweaking every now and then of the PHP-script we built for it, it gives us close to 100% accurate results with a lot of country specific searches.
Not really hard to do, but is saving us a ton of time.
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: Unlimited
Export: Yes (email delivery too)
Price: $20-$150/month (white label solution available)
Website: http://www.mykeywordrankings.com
Successfully tracks Organic and Google Local rankings.
Etc: Track Unlimited Domains, Unlimited Users, Multiple Level of Logins
I should point out that Advanced Web Ranking is $99-$599 per Year, not per Month; with no volume restrictions. Up to 99 proxies is really your bottleneck at the point where volume starts to matter.
Thanks for this list, it’s quite useful. Among the free ones, there is also http://rankchecker.net/ it’s the one I use fromt time to time.
Great post, Dan.
Ginzametrics (I’m the CEO) might be a mixture of on-demand and campaign-based, if I understand your definitions.
We provide daily rankings and new keyword ranking data is often available within a few minutes. We then manage these keywords on a campaign basis for you going forward.
Here are some stats about us:
Market: Enterprise (comparable with BrightEdge and Conductor)
Volume: Unlimited (depending on plan)
Export: Brandable PDFs, Excel, CSV, API for ranking data and more.
Price: $199-$2,500 (with additional bulk data plans available)
I did a small scale comp a couple of months ago. I ended up liking SErank from Rage Software the best. I try to avoid monthly subscriptions if possible.
Looks like this list is missing what is probably the largest (and one of the oldest)…
http://tools.digitalpoint.com/tracker
Over 100,000 registered users tracking over 3,000,000 keyword rankings back to 2003 (~250,000,000 points of data in the system).
Volume: unlimited domains/keywords
Export: Yes
Supports both on-demand and campaign checking
Uses search engine APIs to (no scraping).
Cost: Free to search up to 20 position deep. Beyond that, it’s premium membership ($10-25/month depending on term).
As a bonus, there’s a link tracking mode as well to track historical changes in the number of links a site has, it’s PageRank and how much content is indexed.
Here’s one, SearchEnabler SEO platform designed to suit start-ups & small businesses
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 50 / 1 domain – 500 / 5 domains
Export: Weekly Rank summary in Email
Price: $15 – $49 / month
Website: http://www.searchenabler.com/blog/keyword-rank-tracking-and-mail-reports/
Forgot to mention, SearchEnabler ties traffic data with keyword rank tracking. It helps in understanding performance of keywords.
Planning to include conversions in coming iterations.
Here’s another:
Keyword Strategy
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: Unlimited
Export: CSV, Excel, Txt
Price: $29/month for 2 domains
Referrer-based tracking is passive so it doesn’t violate Google’s terms of service. Can essentially pull the ranking data in realtime as searchers reach the website.
Agree with Tad above – CuteRank is superb – can access a huge amount of different countries too.
Just thought I’d mention that above it looks like the $99 plans for Raven Tools and SEOmoz are:
Raven Tools: 1000 keywords
SEOmoz: 300 keywords
This is a little misleading because SEOmoz lets you TRACK 300 keywords, which means they will run for all search engines weekly. With Raventools as soon as you run one keyword on 3 engines one time you’re down to 997, so really, assuming you’re using the tools with 3 engines to their max it looks more like:
Raven Tools: 1000 keywords
SEOmoz: 3,897 = 300*3*4.33 (average # of weeks / month)
Not too mentions that you also have the ability to use the keyword tool in research tools for on-demand which has a limit of 200/day, so technically if you use this tool it brings SEOmoz up to 9,980 keywords / month – quite different from 300.
Anyway, good post. I’m new to the SEO biz and have been a subscriber to SEOmoz since December and it’s starting to look more and more useless to me. Keyword tracker is nice, and the community is great but I despise open site explorer. Think I’m going to end up ditching SEOmoz in favor of Raven and supplement keyword rankings with SEscout.
Thanks for that great list. I propose to add a WebCEO to the list. They have a really cool rank checker, in both online and desktop version.
Really nice list Dan. Thanks for the thorough research and taking the time to share your findings.
Take a look also to http://www.allorank.com.
Totally free, without registration.
Thanks dan to bringing this to here from your marketing folks . . yes these are really some of the most reliable rank checker tools which every SEO should know!
Wow, what a comprehensive and fresh overview. I though I’d mention Rankpanel.
Although they have no custom keyword tracking you can look at all the 500,000 keywords they track for free:
On-Demand vs Campaign: Campaign
Volume: 500,000
Export: No
Price: Free
worthwhile to check them out on http://www.rankpanel.com
I’ve used Market Samurai and it’s easily one of my favorites. I’m also a big fan of the SEO for Firefox plugin.
I’ve worked on Google Ad Planner. It’s okay but it’s not very accurate when it comes to small websites.
This is a very well-researched list you have here.
Great list!!
Maybe it falls a little outside the category – but I refer my clients to http://www.impersonal.me when they want to check the rankings themselves
[...] The Ultimate List of Rank Checkers Stealing SEO Clients for Fun and Profit Mike King’s SEO and Social Media Tools – SMX London 2012 [...]
Good list – I’d like to add that Raven no longer offers rank tracking but we do – JetRank.com.
We can cater to agencies as well, offering discount for high volume users.
Thanks!
- James
[...] The Ultimate List of Rank Checkers [...]
Whoosh Traffic should be on here. Very user friendly, and cheaper than almost everything on here.
Thanks for letting me know! Hopefully I’ll get around to a version 2 of this, since folks are liking the resource, I’d love to update it!
I second the nomination for Whoosh Traffic. Easy to use, and friendly support at an affordable price.
I know one more tool which is great for checking position and gathering lots of information about SEO statistics - Colibritool. It has GA integration, competition monitoring, detailed backlink checker, traffic statistics, conversion measurements and more. It works really good and we didn’t have problem with it. Also their support works quick which is very important thing.
Best regards
Anna
Very comprehensive list of rank checking software. Found combination of using seomoz and advance web ranking together as a good solution for rank reporting. nice post. Thanks for sharing
Check http://www.rankerizer.com/
Its free!
P.S. Scroll to the bottom for links after subsribing on the homepage.
I’m currently using rank tracker although I’m happy with the speed and for the most part the accuracy is good. The export on the Pro license is really limited. I want a solution that is reasonably priced and allows export of all historical data. any suggestions?
Perhaps this listing can further be segmented by software & online resources. The several software options listed are good for small businesses and DIY users but firms with several clients are – in my experience – best served with an online tool as the resource allocation can be a burden when running thousands of keywords – not to mention the blackouts from search engines software users can experience if searching large data-sets, unless you are using a proxy – which then adds to the cost of a software solution.
I use SerpScan from NY – it hits the big three and includes Local Ranking data. It’s very customizable and allows client access to online KW reporting 24/7 (my clients love that). The UI is a bit clunky, but the reporting is spot on.
Thanks for mentioning SerpScan – and I totally agree – this list is in dire need of improvement, which I’ve been meaning to do.
I have been using SEOmoz Rank Checker happily until recently. It now does not seem to be able to provide ranking for google.com, just Bing and Yahoo.
That’s very odd! I would suggest emailing them at help@seomoz.org – they’re very fast and responsive!