We’re excited to share a search engine ranking tool we’ve recently created and have just added to CCSEO.com.

This tool uses the search APIs from Google, Bing, and Yahoo to find the rank of a specified domain URL (website addresses) in the search results for a given search query (keyword/search term).

For example, if we enter the search term “seo” and the domain “wikipedia.org” the search results show that Wikipedia ranks first in each of the three search engines for the keyword “seo”. (The number of results checked is limited to 50 listings, owing to parameters set by the search engine APIs.)

We allowed for domain URLs both with and without the www prefix, it checks for both regardless of what is entered in the domain field. This functionality can alert you to whether any of the search engines have a website’s pages indexed with and without the prefix. In which case if it’s your website, you can take steps to rectify the matter.

Additionally, (if the website is listed for the search query you entered) the tool shows the complete URL (web page address) of the ranking page, and gives you a link to click through to the SERP (search engine results page) to see the listing live at that search engine. This gives you additional information about how the listing appears, and who the surrounding competitors are.

We welcome you to use this tool to help you research domain ranking for target search terms in your SEO strategy, and your competitors’.  We hope that you find the interface simple and usable.

If you have any feedback, thoughts or suggestions, please leave a comment!

Google conveniently provides easy integration of Google Adwords data with their Analytics program, allowing you to track results of your Adwords pay-per-click campaigns through Analytics.  If you have sponsored listings on Yahoo, Bing, or any other paid search program, you will have to do a bit of customization in order to supply the same data about these additional PPC (Pay-Per-Click) programs to Analytics.

In order to signify to Analytics that a specific visitor is a paid search visitor, you will need to provide custom destination URLs for your ads – these custom URLs have URL parameters that help Analytics identify details about the PPC campaigns you are running on other search services.  Conveniently, Google has provided a URL Builder Tool, to help create these URLs for you.  Once you start running your ads with new destination URLs, Analytics will automatically collect and display data on visitors who come in to your site from your campaigns.

Viewing paid "Keywords" in Google Analytics shows msn and yahoo PPC traffic.

For example, instead of inputting a destination URL of http://www.ccseo.com/ on a Yahoo! PPC ad, you can use the URL builder tool to generate a URL like this:

http://www.ccseo.com/?utm_source=Yahoo&utm_medium=PPC&utm_content=Ad3&utm_campaign=Local

This URL has 4 added parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_content, utm_campaign), which signal to Google Analytics that incoming traffic from this particular ad originated through Yahoo PPC, come from ad number 3, and from the “Local” campaign.

Effective use of the URL Builder Tool can give you a lot of valuable information about traffic from non-Google paid search sources in Google Analytics, helping you to effectively measure and track the results of your paid search campaigns.

Have you used the URL builder tool? Do you have any questions about using this Analytics feature?