3) Do the forum rules allow you to name any particular tool? If not, I would appreciate a PM if you know of a tool that will give me the info I need.

Please have a read of our updated posting rules [webmasterworld.com]. Naming tools is OK in the context of the discussion. It's preferred to keep the discussion public for other members/visitors to see how you can overcome these particular ranking issues... thanks.

Brotherhood of Lan - Thanks. They I guess I could restate #3 as "Does anyone know of a reliable tool to show Serp positions for a localized site"?

thanks

1) is it ok with google to try to find out where you rank for a keyword. I'm not planning on daily checks, I just want to get a realistic idea of where the site stands

It's against their terms of service to perform automated queries, but that doesn't stop people from doing it.

2) Are there tools that will reliably let me check the serp position of a site for a particular keyword as if the search was from a local user.

There are a few, some offer geolocalisation, others don't. You can manually change your location in the search preferences [google.com]. FWIW I've done some large scale rank checking and just making sure you're logged out and choosing your google.TLD, language and location is enough to get the 'vanilla' results. "private browsing" browser functionality is good for clearing yourself of any cookies

If you're just checking a few terms (less than a dozen) I'd suggest doing it manually. Maybe use some javascript to lift the results off the browser to save some time. If it's hundreds of terms, there are a few commercial products that'll track terms for you, but you'll probably want to verify that they're accurate/similar to what you see anyway.

I believe BrightLocal now does localized rank tracking and I know for a fact Places Scout does, because I've done consulting to help them tweak/improve that feature. In fact Scout even has a feature when you can see how you rank in all the surrounding zips and cities, color coded on a map.

But I don't know what you are trying to do. If you are a local search consultant and need to check rankings for lots of clients, then the paid tools above are the leaders for local. But if you were in the biz seems you would know about them already.

However it sounds like you have more of a casual interest, so I'll tell you about a free tool/trick that might give you even more insights than you are asking about.

When you view local rankings in Google and you look at the pack you are seeing a combination of ranking factors that are both organic and Places/maps related so it's difficult to evaluate pure onsite or organic performance because things like proximity to centroid, citations, reviews and NAP consistency and more are all thrown in the mix.

If you just want to pull out and view PURE ORGANIC results, to see how much of an impact your on-site SEO improvements are making -use AOL search.

AOL pulls Google pure organic results, as if there was no such thing as Google+ Local or the "pack". You can also set search location in AOL just like you can in Google search so you can see localized results.

I use AOL search all the time when I help SEOs diagnose ranking problems. It can help me determine if there there is a ranking penalty and if so, is it on the maps or organic side of the house.

And it's also useful for reverse engineering the local algo.

But using AOL would still be a manual check, just like searching on Google to see the rank. If you have lots of clients you need to check on an automated basis, then 2 I mentioned above are the industry standard tools for local.

Linda Buquet

Take a look at options like [getstat.com ] or [searchmetrics.com ].

Getstat is the Cadillac of rank trackers, and priced accordingly.

"Getstat is the Cadillac of rank trackers, and priced accordingly."

"The man meant Lexus but he ain't know it."

Snoop
The Wire

> Cadillac

They're all essentially scrapers. Some have nice bells and whistles though.