New Feature: Random Ranking

While we strive to offer perfect, uninterrupted data, there are times where unexpected issues can result in delays or gaps in ranking data. This is typically a rare occurrence but when it does happen, we end up receiving a few inquiries requesting that we fill the gaps in the data. Historically, it has been our policy that if we are unable to get or process data, we show honest reporting within our interface so that people understand that we ran into issues. The little yellow triangles aren’t fun for us and definitely aren’t fun for our users.

Changes to Retrieving Data

The past couple weeks have been somewhat trying for us and we have had to do a bit of soul searching. For two years now, we’ve had a team of children working 16 hour days typing search queries into the engines and manually recording the rank of each and every site in our system. This has worked well for the most part except for various organized “ditch days” that are usually the real reason for gaps in data. Two weeks ago, the kids decided they were entitled to going on spring break and everything fell apart. We’ve been working on catching up since then and with all of the headaches it caused everyone, we are taking steps to terminate all of our manual search staff.

[Read more...]

Down Status

We woke up to some database connectivity issues this morning. We are working on it, and should have everything resolved soon. Once we figure out exactly what happened, and get to the root cause, we’ll provide update here on the blog.

Currently, it looks like the space allocated for our database tables filled up, so we’re in the process of building more space and getting everything synced.

Update: We were running out of RAM on our database server when trying to rebuild some things. We’ve been needing to upgrade that server anyways, so we’re upgrading it now. Once things are back up you should see not only your accounts restored, but a significant performance boost as well.

Update: And we’re back!

Latest CSVs Exported

We’ve got a quick, handy new feature available for everyone today. Now in your account tab you’ll see the last 10 CSVs that were exported and links to all of them anyone on your team can download. You can also see the status of each export in progress.   [Read more...]

Local Results Updated

After the latest local changes Google made to the search results we had a lot of updates to do with regards to how we process the local results. Those updates are now live and have been for a few days. Here’s an overview on how we parse each kind of local search result we’re getting served. We’re currently getting served three different types: the old style, the newest integrated style, and another style similar to the old style only the text that preceeds that pack starts with “Places for…”.

We’ve had a few questions on exactly how we plan on calculating rankings with these new results and why. Basically we try and make the “rank” reflect where that site would actually be located within a traditional search results page. [Read more...]

Understanding Relative Search Volume

We’ve updated the way we show global and local search volume figures we get via the AdWords API. We’ve decided to calculate traffic data we get from AdWords and give each number a relative value compared to the keywords tracking within a domain or page. There are a couple reasons for this …

  1. We consistently have issues with the AdWords API not returning data, or not matching what people see in the Google Keyword Tool.
  2. Any sort of search volume metric should be thought about relative to the other terms being researched.

I think the way we’ve decided to do this, is a better solution than just showing the Global or Local search volume figures. [Read more...]

Bing API Issue

Update: Bing & Yahoo! data are back!

There’s an issue with the Bing API currently, it’s looking like.  Bing now powers Yahoo US and Canada, so you’ll see issues with Yahoo results as well.  We’re working on a solution and will keep you all updated.