Advanced Web Ranking: the most accurate way to monitor rankings
Over the years we’ve tried dozens of ways to monitor rankings on the major search engines and none of them have ever been able to deliver accurate results, apart from Advanced Web Ranking.
I have very little patience with rank checkers that don’t show accurate search engine rankings because there is no point in reporting on incorrect information. We used to have an in-house tool for monitoring rankings but Google managed to spot all the IP addresses and started to return strange results. We also tried Raven and a few other hosted systems but none of them showed the same rankings we could see in the office. We decided that rather than try to reinvent the wheel we would just move everything onto a server version of AWR.
The server version is great for a number of reasons. The first is that the data is stored in one central point so everybody in the team has access to the same data when they use AWR on their laptops. The second is that you can schedule AWR to perform regular updates and because it’s on the server you don’t need to worry about leaving your PC on overnight just to ensure the software is running.
The most important thing for rank checking is the ability to see trends across competitors and a wide range of keywords. If you just want to check your website rankings for a handful of keywords each week then you can quite easily do it manually but if you want to accurately see industry trends over a period of months or even years then AWR is the best way to do it.
I’m not going to review all the features here (you can see a full list of features here) but there are a few favourites:
- Ability to track Google Local rankings
- Scheduled updates & backups
- Keyword research tool
- Track competitors rankings
- Multiple users with different rights
- Emailable reports
- WordTracker integration
As you can see from the version list the server edition is the most expensive but if don’t want the server edition then you can pick up the Pro edition for $199 which is a bargain.
Post category: Search Engine Optimisation Tweet
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3, a Leeds SEO & Digital Agency specialising in SEO, Web Design, Development & Social Media.
Comments
Read the 31 comments below, or add your own!
oh dear, have you finally succumb to paid blogging…
No I haven't. Do you really think I have nothing better to do than write paid blog posts?
It does totally look like a sponsored post though.
I think if you have a lot of websites this tool can help you if really works.
I would like very much to know whats blogstorm is and how it really works, thank you.
Daniel Hammed
danielhameed@gmail.com
I tried AWR and its probably one of the best ways to monitor. Has about every feature you could ask for. If only it worked faster, but considering what its doing it might be a tall order.
It is definitely very hard to find accurate and precise tracking methods as they seem to differ much from source to source. Seems like a great tool!
We use Advanced Web Ranking and I totally agree with your comments. It is by far the best web ranking tool available, and I personally tried and tested a lot of similar packages, but AWR won hands-down.
The only other tool that comes close is my ex-employers in-house tool, which is as good for what we use it for, but doesnt have as much functionality as AWR.
In response to Online Brandings comment – it can go a lot faster if you use proxy servers – I personally use Trusted proxies for $33 bucks a month and it is 5 x faster than without the proxy servers.
why not use Google Webmaster Console?
Avid reader here and it really does look paid Patrick.This post could have been written without the keyword rich links out to AVR. You really liked it that much?
None the less, we do use AVR at the office and its really feature packed as you said.
I use it and swear by it. The pricing scheme could be better, the service is close to sub-standard, it does come with a healthy number of bugs (but they are just annoying – and I've had no crashes in recent months) and the support team act very salesy.
BUT I still swear by it.
This looks like a useful tool, the pricing looks not too bad as well.
I like to check my rankings for my sites, sometimes I’m quite obsessive about it, especially after making changes or getting new links.
Nice post Patrick. Thanks for telling about Advanced Web Ranking. This tool seems great to monitor website rankings.
I love this product, but can understand people commenting about it being a paid post.
In terms of disclosure it would be nice to know if you are taking advantage of this Special Offer for Bloggers from AWR:
http://www.advancedwebranking.com/special-offers.html
I’m assuming not, but it is a tempting offer…
This seems like some excellent software for any optimsiation department and I will be looking into this further to compare its capabilities against software such as IBP. Having the software stored on a server allows everyone access and has multiple benefits.
Being able to see trends across sites and a wide range of keywords is extremely useful, and I think a key benefit of the software. I’d like to hear from other users of AWR, to see their experiences and if the software competes well with alternatives.
This could be a very useful tool! If it is really accurate of course… Maybe I will try the free trial before, because I have other tools. The price (per year)is not that bad either
You may not have been paid but you probably should have been. Also I have used AWR in the past and did not have a good experience.
Maybe they’ve updated it so it’s not completely rubbish anymore?
We found AWR was good but very resource hungry and slow, even when hosted on its own pc.
Worth checking out Rank Tracker if you want less resource hungry ranking software. Still AWR is a world better than most of the competition.
And yes we did try proxies with it
Thanks for the post – certainly seems like this ranking system might be worth investigating.
Cheers.
SEO Rank Checker from SEO Book is free and it works as a Firefox plug-in. Rankings seem fairly accurate except when there are Google product search results or image results.
Don’t u mean Ronk Checker? LOL. It’s ok but heavy usage will definitely lead to your queries being blocked on Google.
Thanks for this – either they’ve made some good changes to advanced web ranking or I just didn’t pay it the proper attention when I last looked at it, either way it looks great now.
We originally bought another product but I think AWR is the way to go because of the history graph, which ranktracker doesn’t have. Do you have an aff code for AWR by any chance – might as well use that when we buy.
I will give the trial a go because this could be very helpful!
Great post for sure. Its hard to find out what your rankings are. Seo moz does a good job as well as seobook. This is a good one though, im sure its much more advanced than the two I listed. Keep up the good info
Nice post. I’ll give AWR a try – I have the same issue with rank checkers, what’s the point of them if they don’t provide correct information?
There’s a couple that are good for checking general positions in the top 1,000 (SEOSERP is ok) but they still need to be checked manually.
Cheers for the info
In the USA there are now disclosure laws that state if you are receiving something in exchange for talk about a product or service (like money or say… a “free” enterprise license for the product in question) then it has to be disclosed.
Now, I understand Blogstorm doesn’t fall under US laws, but the law was created for a reason; Transparency is vital to maintaining the trust and respect of your readership.
James the UK has those laws too I believe. I added this post because they have a good product and didn’t get a free copy although I probably could have.
Thanks for clarifying, Patrick. I’ll be sure to check them out in that case.
Okay first of yes this post sounds like a paid one but have to say AWR and advanced link manager are great tools. Ive been using them for around three years and previous to that i used webtrends.
If you decide to purchase this be aware when setting up to make sure you get the right regional version of the search engine you’re plotting your rankings against and also play around in the settings. For instance returning out of 999 results and multiple entries will only slow the process down (taking days instead of minutes/hours to run a report) and nobody is going to click past page 10. You can right click and see the result in the search engine but remember depending on the data centre this may not be an exact match each time.
Thanks for the special offers link it’s an excuse to get another licence.
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August 17, 2010 at 8:24am