Ask HN: Search Engine Rank Checking API?

AFAIK, no. I looked into writing one of these, but it was right after google changed it's search API so that it was only javascript. (at least, I couldn't get a key to the standard backend webservice API). My impression is that google didn't really want you to be able to do this, because better metrics on rankings would make it easier for people to game google.<p>I decided against using the JS version because I'm not that good in JS, but mostly because I saw warning everywhere that "results returned by the JS search API are not necessarily in the same order as if you searched through their web interface". Blew me away -- they're really returning things in a different order?<p>But now I'm questioning whether or not that's just because their rankings will change depending on who is searching -- locale, preferences, etc., will all affect rankings. I suppose the thing to do would be to build this with their JS Search API, and see if I can get consistent rank results (and cmp to hand searches).<p>But I'm with you -- feels like this should be a tool that exists everywhere.

This is actually something I've been doing as a side project but it's not something I can give you access to right now. There are other "rank tracker" services, but none of them are instant. SEOmoz has one, which will allow you to enter up to 5 search terms, but you'll need to dish out some $$ to lift that limit - <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker" rel="nofollow">http://www.seomoz.org/rank-tracker</a><p>Basically, because the search engines don't provide this data through a public API, you end up having to use the different search APIs and crawl each one's results for your target domain.