For some time now, I've had a requirement to create search engine website ranking reports for a number of different websites. This has usually entailed the manual and arduous process of searching through Google, with Google being the major search engine, looking for sites based on the keywords that I enter. As you can imagine, searches like this take time and so typically, I only get as far as page ten for a particular keyword before moving onto the next one.

What I really needed was something to do this for me, something that could query the search engines, interpret the results and just give me what I'm really interested in, the stats.

I was taken by surprise to find out just how many search engine ranking software products were available for handle such a task and so thought the only fair way to chose any of them was by going for those that appeared top for the search terms that I was typing to find them. If they'd managed to successfully use their software to achieve high rankings then all credit to them and they were likely to be the better pieces of software.

So I typed 'web ranking software' as this is exactly what I wanted. The first result that caught my eye was the number one organic result, 'Advanced Web Ranking'. Not only was it top of the list, it also carried with it a prestigious additional piece of information in the listing known as a 'Sitelinks'. For those that aren't aware of these, 'Sitelinks' are additional links that Google places under only a handful of listings that offer shortcuts to pages within the site featured in the listing. To me, this indicates a site that's been around long enough to earn Google's trust and credibility.

Downloading 'Advanced Web Ranking' was straightforward, and with a 30 day free trial allowing full use of any one of their four versions (Standard, Professional, Enterprise and Server), there really is scope to evaluate all aspects of the software. I chose Enterprise which would show me every feature that the software had, apart from the server which allows multiple people to work on the same list of projects at the same time.

Set up was simple and before I knew it, I was into creating my first project. A project is started by selecting the search engines that will be used in the queries. The default was three, Google, Yahoo and the new Bing, although there is the option to select from an incredible 1901 search engines in total! You can even create lists of search engines to split them into categories, say by country for example.

Following a simple wizard takes you to the next step, selecting keywords. Start typing a keyword and immediately you are presented with a list of similar phrases along with the number of results in the Google listings, straight from 'Google Suggest'. At this point, if you have a Wordtracker account, you can also configure this to offer suggestions. Once you've picked a keyword, you have the choice of either adding it to the project or automatically creating all combinations and permutations of additional keywords by mixing up the words used in the particular phrase. Keywords are added to project and assigned a colour which makes it easier when looking at multiple keywords later one, Once the keyword list is complete, the wizard moves you on to the next step, adding websites.

Websites (and specific web pages) are added to the project as easily as keywords. You might start with one website, if all you're interested in is retrieving statistics, but I soon found out that this is an extremely useful and quick way of running the same queries against your competitors sites to see how they rank, which I'll mention later.

With the project setup, it's time to start creating the reports. This is as easy as pressing the play button and leaving the software to work away in the background retrieving and sorting data. This can take some time, not because the software is slow, but because once it retrieves a page of results from a search engine, it pauses to simulate a person looking at results before requesting the next page, hence removing the risk of being banned by the search engine for hogging resources.

The software queries all of the selected search engines for all of the selected keywords and once finished, presents the results in a number of different formats. You can easily see where you rank in a specific search engine for each of the project keywords, as well as getting the bigger picture by seeing all the results from all search engines at once. Selecting and deselecting individual search engines and keywords is simple and it doesn't take long to get the view the suits you. The software cleverly remembers these results each time the project is run again, allowing the progress to be charted, a feature included in the software, allowing you to see the success of any search engine marketing campaign over any period of time in an instant.

As well as gathering the statistics related to the site that has been entered in the project, the software also has a section showing the top sites for your selected keywords. This allows you to immediately identify the competition and if you like, add them to your project so you can start to chart their search engine success. Competitive analysis such as this is invaluable in building your search engine ranking. After all, if you can do exactly the same optimisation as the number one ranked site, and then some, it stand to reason that you should soon be number one or at least on your way there.

Another real strength in the software is the ability to then create custom reports from the data. The reports can be in almost any format you can think of, HTML, PDF, CSV, XML, the list goes on. It's possible to stylise these reports allowing them to be branded if you wanted to produce them directly for your clients, and once they're produced, they can be automatically emailed or even uploaded to an FTP site. The project and any reports can also be scheduled, so if you had to create one of these reports showing up to date search engine ranking every month, no problem.

There's so much more to the software that can really be covered in a space like this which is why it comes complete with a comprehensive help guide and a number of tutorials to get you going.

Oh, and did I mention that there's built in keyword analysis and search engine submission tools? There's also a sepearate product called Advanced Link Manager which includes amongst other things a link popularity analyzer allowing you to find out who links to your site and which keywords they are using.

I really can't fault Advanced Web Ranking, it does all I need and more and once set-up requires virtually no effort to keep it running.

Visit Advanced Web Ranking website