All account admins will now see a new column with some really interesting data about the type of things we find on a search result.  this isn’t available for users just yet). Wanted to get your feedback before we made it fully available.

We’re keeping track of which universal boxes are thrown on a search result. Currently, we’re detecting local, image, video, real-time, shopping, blog and news results.  We’re also detected if rich snippets were found on results.

So … if you’re tracking 100 keywords, and 90 of them are throwing image results, you should make sure your images are optimized well.  If a lot of keywords are throwing video results, start getting some video on YouTube.  These are opportunities for you to more easily get page one exposure for the terms you’re tracking within AuthorityLabs.

Here … we can see that when you search for ‘nexus one’ on Google, as of yesterday, you’ll get video and news results along with your typical web results.  We can also see that rich snippets existed on that page.  When you search for ‘cell phone’ you get shopping and news results.  When you search for ‘phone’ you get blog results, as well as rich snippets.

Here … we can see that when you search for ‘business events’ and ‘business networking events’ local packs are thrown but the domain ‘networkingphoenix.com’ wasn’t found within them.

We’re treating local packs a little different now.  If we find a local pack, and we find the domain or URL you’re tracking within that local pack, we’ll report on the position of that domain or URL within the local pack.

Here … we can see that when you search for ‘tampa lawyer’ you’ll get served a local pack, and as of yesterday, you’ll find tgalaw.com at position E.

Hopefully this will give you all much more insight into what’s happening within search engines, and provide a pretty easy way to find opportunities for more traffic.

Things aren’t working like they should today. Over the last three or four weeks we’ve been working on a lot of major updates to AuthorityLabs.  Everything was looking good on our staging server so we decided to get everything on production last weekend. We spend all day Saturday and Saturday night (till about 5:00am) getting production setup with the new hotness, and weren’t able to completely finish the push to production until  Sunday afternoon. Everything was pulling down data correctly, but we’ve run into some issues this morning which is causing that data not to show correctly.

Things may be a little funky for the next couple days but it’ll be worth it, I promise!  Here are a few new things you can expect to see in your account this week…

• Indexed page data – the total number of pages of a domain or subfolder indexed in Google, Yahoo! and Bing with a list of the most authoritative pages according to each engine.
• Type data – we’re now looking for universal results which appear on Google.  If we parse a serp and find image, shopping and video results you’ll be able to see that in the new ‘Type’ column.
• Local ranking data – along with the type data you’ll see if a local pack is thrown. If we find the URL or domain your tracking within that local pack you’ll be able to see the position.
• Real-time results – pretty soon after you add new keywords you’ll have ranking data.  We’re still refining this to get it as close to ‘real-time’ as possible but on staging it’s currently only taking about 30 seconds.
• Updated graphing library – We’ve completely revamped the graphs, which are now entirely javascript based (so you can see them on your mobile).  They also allow us to do rolling averages on the fly in the browser, which will help visualize longer timeframes and view trends associated with rankings.
• Some API updates for a few of our heavier API consumers.

We’re going to get all this working right today, but it’ll probably take a couple days to work some of the kinks out. We really appreciate your patience.

We’ve finally got backlink data live.  Here’s what you need to know.

Resolving Domains & URLs

The first thing to notice is this icon which you’ll find to the left of your domain or URL. Before we actually pull link data we resolve the URL you’ve entered into your account. Hover your mouse of that, or click it and you’ll be taken to the page which we get redirected to if your domain / URL is entered into a browser as is.  We do this because we get different link figures depending on how a domain or URL is entered. So, if your redirects are setup correctly, and have been for a while, your backlink figures should be correct.

Where We’re Getting this Data

We get link data from four different sources, to give you the most comprehensive look at an overall link profile for a domain or URL. Yahoo! Site Explorer, SEOmoz’s LinkScape, MajesticSEO and Google Blog Search give us our link counts. LinkScape and Google Blog Search give us our individual links. Each count is an actual link which takes you to the source, as we’ve accessed it. For the social media & email blog, Convince & Convert, we’re reporting these figures.

Link count via Linkscape…

Link count via MajesticSEO…

Link count via Yahoo! Site Explorer…

Link count via Google Blog Search…

You may notice we report slightly different numbers than you’ll see on Yahoo! and Google Blog Search, which is normal. They should be about the same though.

If you are seeing something strange, make sure to let us know.

Domains vs. Pages

You can actually enter a specific URL into your account and all data will reflect that page, ranking data included.  One of Jay Baer‘s more popular posts about must do’s for serious bloggers attracted a good amount of links, which we can see here.

We can also see a list of blogs linking to that post specifically as well. This list is updated in real-time, so you’ll see new blogs linking to a site or URL as they’re discovered, which is pretty darn quick

Graphing Historical Link Data

You can even graph historical link counts. Clicking the little gray graph button  pops data into a graph. Here we have Yahoo!, MajesticSEO and blog link data graphed.

Which produces this graph…

That’s about it for now … enjoy!

The AdWords API team has been making serious improvements on their API. We had been using the old version of their API, because that was the only thing available, but we’re now upgraded to the latest version.

We used to not be able to get search volume numbers as you would see them when set to ‘Exact Match’ over on the AdWords External Keyword Tool. With the new AdWords API, we’re now bringing in Exact Match numbers. What’s the difference between ‘Exact Match’ and ‘Broad Match’? Basically, ‘Broad Match’ gives you search volume numbers on that term, and closely associated terms to that one. ‘Exact Match’ supposedly tells us how many people searched for that term exactly on average in a given month.

We’re also pulling in, not only the average number of searches globally, but also the search volume targeted to a locale. So, if you’re tracking the same domain for multiple locales within AuthorityLabs, you’ll see more targeted keyword suggestions based on the locale. You can also choose to show local search volume numbers for the previous month vs. average global search volume numbers.

In our demo account, we’re tracking bluehost.com for four different locales (US, Canada, UK and Australia) to understand how they’re represented in those SERPs.  Lets take a look at some of the keyword suggestions we get for bluehost.com targeted at different locales…

United States

Canada

United Kingdom

Australia

Once you have keywords in your account, you can choose to view the Global Volume data, or the Local Volume simply by clicking a link in your Tasks section.

We’re much happier with these numbers, and the ability to get targeted search volume data.  All this data is also accessible via our API as well.  Keep an eye for backlink data in your account soon.

We recently released the ability to mask an AuthorityLabs account to any domain for Pro accounts. What does this mean exactly? Basically, instead of having your AuthorityLabs account show up at demo.authoritylabs.com, for example, it can live at demo.accountrank.com.

Lots of our customers have been giving clients access to their account, and now, with domain & email aliasing, those accounts are 100% white-labeled.

To access domain and email aliasing you’ll need a Pro account. Once you’re on a Pro account, create a CNAME DNS entry for the subdomain you want your account to show up on. If you want your account to show up on reporting.example.com, create a CNAME for ‘reporting’ and point it to ‘redirect.authoritylabs.com’. If you use GoDaddy to manage domains, you should see a page like this from your Domain Manager …

After you’ve done this go to your account tab > Edit Setting > Customize and set your URL to the CNAME you just created.

Notice that you can also customize the emails your account sends to users. By default, AuthorityLabs sends emails from noreply@authoritylabs.com. Make that any email address you want, and customize the from name of those emails as well. For example, the settings in the screenshot above produce a welcome email that looks like this …

If you’re an agency or consultant, using a customized AuthorityLabs account is a great way to separate yourself from the crowd.