Search Engines Ranking Reports
Reports aren't much good if you don't understand what they mean. If the engine returns the full summary description for the page, it will be displayed. Some engines only report whether you are listed or not and nothing more. Here's a description of some of the terminology you'll find on the various reports:
Matches Scanned: This is the total number of matches that were found for that keyword search. A setting on the Options Tab limits total matches by default to the first 30. Therefore, if more than 30 matches were found, Total Matches Found will display 30 even if thousands of matches could potentially be retrieved from the search. Searches must be limited in scope or the report would be too large to be usable.
Position: This is one of the most important pieces of information the Report provides you! It represents the exact position of every match that contains your domain.
Page: This is the screen page that one of your pages appeared on when doing a keyword search. Most engines display about 10 matches per page before asking the user to click to view the next page but the number can vary. The user can often change the number of matches displayed per page by changing a setting on the search engine before pressing search. The Report will show your page position based on if the user performed a search using the engine's default settings.
Ranking Report Graphs
When reading report graphs, keep in mind that the axis of a graph that shows dates is not a true time scale. Each date corresponds to the last mission run on that date and the graph shows changes from one mission to the next. However, the spaces between dates are fixed and do not indicate the time interval between missions. For example, a graph showing data for the dates 2005-03-01 and 2005-03-02 will have the same spacing as a graph showing data for 2005-03-01 and 2005-05-15.
This report also shows your total rankings appearing in the top 5, top 10, top 20, and top 30 matches, as well as the number of rankings that moved up, the number of rankings that moved down, and the number that stayed the same since you last ran the mission. An overall visibility score and visibility percentage show exactly how visible your site is on the Web at a glance. Never again will you have to guess whether you're making progress in your campaign, or waste time computing these numbers by hand.
Engine Report: There is also a report for Engines that does not currently have any graphs to support it. The Engine report gives you a quick snapshot of how you currently rank for all keywords and engines. It also shows your last reported positions so you can see whether your rank is improving, declining, or remaining the same. Last reported position is the last reported BEST position you achieved. The page that achieves that position could vary over time. To see your results in expanded form, click Expand All. To show only the top levels of each table, click Collapse All. To see a trend graph showing a keyword's position over time, click the keyword.
Ranking Report ~ Summary
The report Summary provides a summarized view of your mission data, including your site's visibility on the search engines, your engine and keyword listings, the number of search engine queries for each run date, and general statistics about the data that was analyzed.
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Ranking Report ~ Visibility
The Visibility report provides information about how visible your site is by providing information about how it's indexed by the four most significant search engines. Search Engine Saturation shows how many pages in your domain are indexed by these major search engines. Search Engine saturation can help you determine whether all the pages in your domain are being indexed, so you can work toward making all your pages highly visible to search engines. Link Popularity counts the indexed references to your site found on other web sites. This statistic provides information about how whether other sites with high visibility are contributing to your site visibility by providing indexed links to your content.
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Ranking Report ~ Trend
Any good manager will tell you that watching trends is important. You can identify and correct problem areas before they become real problems. You can also recognize positive trends and learn from them. By viewing the Trend Report, you'll also know whether you're making any progress or not. This report shows exactly how you rank over time for each keyword and engine. Blue arrows indicate improvements in rank from the previous period, while red arrows show declining rank. Click Expand All to see trend graphs for each engine and keyword. Click Collapse All to see only tables.
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