by Chase Granberry on July 26, 2010
We’ve been getting reports of odd search volume numbers over the last few weeks. The AdWords API started having issues with their search volume numbers beginning at the end of last month. From looking at a lot of keywords, it seems as though the global volume numbers are more reliable than the local search volume figures. We have seen some odd global volume numbers though.
We know August is coming up, and we’re still pulling search volume figures for newly added keywords, just beware … they may not match exactly what you see in the AdWords Keyword Tool.
As of today, there’s no word on when we’ll have good data via the AdWords API again. We’ll make sure to refresh data for all our keywords once we can confirm everything is working the way it should.
by Chase Granberry on May 12, 2010
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.
by Chase Granberry on May 12, 2010
This morning we had another delay in processing results, which you noticed if you signed in sometime in the AM.
We’ve finished processing those are are running some other tasks on accounts, which populate other types of data. So, everything’s good for today, just delayed a bit.
When we initially developed AuthorityLabs we thought just getting the search results at volume were going to be the hard part. To get actual ranking data into accounts, there are three steps…
- Getting the search results.
- Assigning positions to every listing within those search results.
- Parsing the search results, with assigned positions, against the domains or pages everyone’s tracking.
We’ve pretty much nailed down steps #1 and #2. As you can see from this chart, we’re now successfully aggregating results for more than 3,000,000 keywords.
The issue we’ve been dealing with is in step #3. We think we’ve figured out a way to scale that part of the process, but it’s been a struggle to get everything working the way it should. We’re just about there, though, and are in the process of getting that as rock solid as steps #1 and #2.
by Chase Granberry on May 6, 2010
We’re still working on that last little bug, which is keeping ALL keywords from getting consistent daily data. We’ve narrowed it down to an issue we’re having with Amazon S3 and are working through it. I know this has been frustrating for everyone … it’s been extremely frustrating for us, knowing we’ve disappointed these last couple weeks. We really are very close.
One of the things we’ve done to keep this from happening in the future, is implemented an awesome server monitoring solution. It allows us to check on the status of everything in real-time throughout the day. So, if we’re behind for some reason, or things aren’t performing like they should, we’ll know immediately and can adjust accordingly before you all see any issues in your accounts. We had built something similar, in our own admin, but it wasn’t near what we could accomplish with Scout in such a short time period.
Expect cool new stuff in your accounts next week, a more detailed update as to how AuthorityLabs works now, and all your billing or downgrades dates to be pushed back, crediting you for these issues.
by Chase Granberry on May 3, 2010
We’ve got data working it’s way back into ALL accounts, which you’ll see today. We’re in the process of fixing the CSV exports and getting everything else working as it should. You may still some keywords missing data, but those should be restored soon as well.
Since this has been such a big outage, we’ll be moving the billing date back 10 days on all accounts, crediting everyone 10 days worth of data. This will also give any of you who’ve signed up in the last week, 10 extra days to let us earn your business and make up for the lack of consistent service.
Keep checking the blog for updates … we’ll have everything going again soon.
