SEO tools like WebCEO or SEO Elite are normally used to track rankings of keywords. It is also possible to check them manually which is fine for a few selected keywords but impossible for webmasters who track hundreds or even thousands of keywords.

I recently came upon a post on a blog that explained how to track Google rankings in Google Analytics. It did not work at first and I had to fix an error before the ranking tracking was actually working. Below is now the explanation on how to track a website’s ranking in Google.

You start by adding a new profile to an existing website. Start by clicking on the Add New Profile link on the right side of the overview of all websites that have been added to Google Analytics.

Now select to add a profile for an existing domain, select the domain from the drop down list and give it a unique name, e.g. website rankings. A click on continue will create the new website profile which will initially track the same data that the original profile is tracking.

You will be taken back to the profile overview page. Click on the edit link next to the newly created profile. Click on the Add Filter link on the right lower side of the profile detail page.

We need to create three new filters:

Filter name: Ranking 1
Filter type: Custom filter – Include
Filter field: Campaign Medium
Filter pattern: organic

Filter name: Ranking 2
Filter type: Custom filter – Include
Filter field: Campaign Source
Filter pattern: google

Filter name: Ranking 3
Filter type: Custom filter – Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: Campaign term, (.*)
Field B -> Extract B: Referral, (\?|&)cd=([^&]*)
Output To -> User Defined: $A1 (position: $B2)

It then takes a few hours before the first rankings can be checked as the new profile will start tracking traffic beginning with the time it was created.

The rankings are then accessible by clicking on Visitors > User Defined when checking the stats of a website. They look like this

And there you have it. A dead easy way to track keyword rankings in Google.

It is not often that a search engine invites users to test it’s search infrastructure. Google invited webmasters yesterday to test out their next-generation search engine infrastructure. Interested users can point their web browsers to http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ to perform a live test.

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Webmasters usually have the advantage of being able to check how their websites rank for certain keywords which makes it easier for them to spot differences. Most users who commented in the original post at the Google webmasters website mentioned that search results in the new search engine would be more relevant. It was also noted that less spam websites would occupy a position on the first three search results pages.

A quick test for some of the keywords that Ghacks ranks for did not reveal any major changes. Please post your opinion about Google’s next-generation search infrastructure in the comments.