Admittedly, I'm a bit of a stats junkie. I can't get enough of those deliciously tasty tracking metrics to see how a site performs in the search engines, the blogosphere, the news, etc. If I could, I'd do like the NSA and record every conversation everywhere on the planet and audio scan for mentions of "SEOmoz" (update - the NSA has asked that I note that they do not record every conversation everywhere - apparently, Luxembourg is exempt 
).
However, this fine morning (2:30am Seattle time on Veteran's Day), I'm wondering whether the rest of the search marketing community is as obsessive as I am. Thus, a poll!
I figured it's only fair that since I mention these, I walk through how to track them and what they do.
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Inlink Data from Google's Webmaster Tools & Yahoo! Site Explorer
The data above can be found by registering your site with Google's Webmaster Tools and viewing the external links tab. Tracking it over time can be elating, depressing or confusing (just remember that sometimes, even Google has data glitches).
I pull additional data from Yahoo! Site Explorer on both links to the domain as a whole and links to particularly critical pages.
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Search Rankings for Specific Keywords
Rank checking is so 1999... I know, but I still do it sometimes, and since the SEOmoz Rank Checker remembers your old data, it's cool to be able to chart progress on particularly important terms and pages.
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Brand/Domain Mentions in Search Engines
Retrieving brand mentions usually means running a search for your brand name at the engines and excluding your own site (or sites) to see how much web saturation you've got. For example, you can see in the above screen capture that SEOmoz has 1.2 million mentions in Yahoo!'s index, and this search - performancing -site:performancing.com - at Yahoo! shows about 1.73 million mentions. Note that I always like to go to the last page of results when checking results estimates numbers.
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Blog Links/Mentions
While the Google link command isn't worth squat, the blogsearch link command works beautifully, and has great data and results. Tracking mentions over time is important, particularly for bloggers, because it can give you a sense of whether you're accelerating or slowing down your growth and reach.
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Website Inclusion Data
A simple "site:domain.com" command works at all the engines except Ask.com (where you'll need to use "domain site:domain.com"). Again, I'll browse to the last page of results to get the most accurate data.
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PageRank from the Google Toolbar
Before the October PR update, we were a 7/10, after, we became 6/10 (no surprise since a few thousand sites that link to us lost a ton of PR due to selling links). Now, some datacenters are returning an 8/10 for our homepage - really? I don't buy it. So, yes, tracking PR might be pretty useless, but admit it - we all do it, and even though we say it's "worthless," we'll probably all keep doing it. For the tracking obsessed, even bad stats are better than no stats.
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News Mentions
Watching for your domain or brand name in news results can make for slim pickings unless you get mentioned often, but if you're a moderate-sized or big brand, it's good to have sense of not only how often, but how many positive v. negative news results you've got. Both Google & Yahoo! News are useful here, although Google tends to have a slightly larger index.
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Number of Visitor Referrals Sent via Search Engines
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Hopefully, almost everyone is tracking at least this data through your website's analytics. It's valuable stuff and can help you identify swings and trends that can influence your SEO efforts sitewide.
I'll be interested to see the final results and would love to hear your thoughts in the comments on the value of these metrics and whether there might be others you watch as well.
Great list Rand.
I think what is important is the difference between vanity-checks (which we all do, come on, admit it) and really tracking.
The difference is that many of these checks are merely pulling up the information in a browser and going, "oh, that's ______" (fill in with your choice of expletive or exclamation of joy). These are really more of what I'd consider vanity-based.
Tracking however is much different, and the reason for that is that you are seeing "the forest for the trees." Numbers take on much greater value and a whole other life when you can view them over time. PR, indexation, IBLs, blog mentions... viewing the trends of these numbers over the past 12 months and even comparing the movement trends across the different metrics is far more useful.
I watch sever stats day in day out, Google my brand day in day put.
Do this for all my domains. For business domain watch the order queries.
I have a pie graph etched in my brain!
I gues numbers and graphs would be useful for working with a client, but for me as the Boss, I know where things stand.
You're spot on there identity - as well as googling your own company name 1st thing of a morning you need to make sure that you catalog the data somewhere too since on a micro level they bear little significance but on a macro level can reveal some very interesting things.
Even (dare I say it?) monitoring google pagerank over time can be a useful exercise.
I couldn't tell you the last time I intentionally looked up a Google PageRank. I just don't see the point unless you are selling links on your site and trying to create value.
Yea, although I have a unique last name, there is another Joe Rozsa out there in the Buffalo area that plays in some punk rock band or something. Although not really reputation management because it is this other person instead of me, I still don't like when I see his info come up on a Google Alert for my name. Not really a problem on SERP's though since I have plenty of sites (personal, family, business) that own the first page for that "highly competitive" keyword.
Its funny, when I did Rand's post I checked off most of the items he mentioned.
Now I read Identity's post and I'm like - oh, well I don't do all THAT. I know instinctively how well I am doing by mostly doing keyword searches and checking SERPs. Then I check my referral logs to see if the searches are bearing any fruit or if I need to change my targeted keywords.
But tracking month over month? I've never done that. Which is kind of amazing since I tend to throw almost everything into a spreadsheet at some point (dollars spent personal and professional and where, calories eaten and where, I've even clocked and tracked the amount of time I was spending with certain friends - though I did that mostly to prove a point).
Rand's post was very helpful - Identity's comment - a little more so.
Great point; especially when you're just starting out or launching a new brand, it's easy to go overboard. I'm afraid I'm still a bit in the overboard category; there are stats I check daily for clients and myself that don't even change on a weekly basis. I've started really trying to make it part of a strategic process. If you know what question you're trying to answer and then check stats, those stats can go a long way. If you're just hoarding data and basking in your own, semi-imaginary, virtual fame, then it's time to get back to work.
Of course, the other key is to be aware of and track the history of most or all of your analytics. I can't rememember how many times I thought I saw a stat drop or jump, freaked out, and then realized I had no idea what it was the week before
Not to appear too self promotional Rand but I track 3 of those topics in one place using our Reputation Monitor tool:
Which saves a lot of time and also allows me to easily monitor all of the clients.
Ok, enough of the self-promotion. I haven't checked google analytics for at least 30 mins, I bet it's reporting 9am stats by now!!! MUST.GO.CHECK.
As I read through the list my heart sank lower and lower... why? because I was not tracking most of those! About to leave the post with a low head, kicking dust and feeling like my goal is forever on that horizon I see: "I figured it's only fair that since I mention these, I walk through how to track them and what they do."
He aims, he shoots, he scores – thanks.
Google Alerts is still working pretty well for reputation management. It catches stuff that Technorati misses.
You know rand that if you're ever short of blog posts there seems to be enough stats junkies out here that you could just rank the last 100 blog posts by bounce rate and we'd lap it up!
Then you could rank them by time on page... then by conversion rate.... I think the crowd here (myself included!) would love it and it would be mega easy for you guys.
That's a great idea, Tom... We might give that shot in the near future.
Hi Rand. As a fellow stats junkie, I believe I have found something that can help. Try taking a few Analyticza when you feel the need to review your web analytics reporting. I've heard it helps. That said, the side effects sound a bit extreme. :)
https://www.hmtweb.com/blog/2007/10/analyticza-pill-arrives-and-curbs.html
Darn, I'm all out...checking Coremetrics now....
I'm not sure I agree that checking rankings is outdated. If you move away from straight keyword optimization (social media, blog optimization, etc.), then I guess that makes sense. But, I'd guess that a majority of SEOs are still judged on keyword / keyphrase ranking success.
Tracking data certainly does help us to see the swings of the changes we make, and I certainly am a bit obsessed with the data at times. Probably the more difficult part though is taking the data (given a good enough period of time) and taking action that has positive results.
I have enjoyed using your tracking tool to see performance on individual keywords on our sites. Helped us see we went from Pg 3 on Google just a 3+ months ago to Pg 1 data on a big term for our area. Yeah for tracking!
google analytics rocks! Rand what do you think of this google position tool:
https://www.ventio.se/seo-tools/google-position/
I follow all of them apart from the Google and Yahoo news, I am an optimistic person but not a dreamer, like you say, we all keep are eyes on the little green bar.
Ahh reputation management. Now I can add that to my list of services. haha.
Cool.....
Thank for this note
Nice post Rand! Now I can sink my teeth into an analytics report about analytics! LOL the fun just never ends!
No seriously, great post. I am slightly obsessed with analytics myself. (I just ordered the Web Analytics: An Hour a Day after last weeks recommendation.) Maybe a support group for Analytics Anonymous is in order...
Though over the last few years I've stopped to obsess over ranking as much as conversion and sources reports. Of course I still want top ranking but just because I drop a rank one week and come up again the following means a lot less to me and my clients then what the overall conversion rate and sales translated to.
But its amazing on how many ways you can analyze stuff and figure out what is actually important. You can drown yourself and clients in numbers and stats and how much of that actually means anything? I say conversions are what counts. That's money in your pocket. And that means you can drive all the traffic in the world to your site and seo yourself to a number one rank but if it doesn't convert to a sale/lead or whatever the goal is, on your site, then what good does it do.
Thanks for that Rand!!
I am, admittedly, a huge analytics junkie. Currently, I am monitoring my bounce rate, most viewed pages, and my referral KW's from the various engines religiously...by the hour...
My referral KW's from MSN are the most interesting. We rank highly there for things we don't even optimize for, in really competitive categories. No such luck on GOOG or Yaaahooooooeeeew!.
The sadness.
I hear that. The different algorithms are enough to make you crazy. I'm thinking of putting together a study just on Yahoo from the crazy stuff I've seen ( for example, I rank higher for a site that contains a link to my SEO site than I do for the actual site for the text in the anchor text for the link, although the rest of the site has nothing to do with the other). Drives me nuts, the only thing I can think of is that Yahoo loves age, as the other site is a few years older. I own both sites, and haven't touched the older, higher ranking site in ages. This kind of discrepency deserves some research since they are still hanging around 20% market share, goofy results or not.
Hear, hear...any quirk can lead to an unexpected advantage!
So how often do you go through your list of metrics?
Personally, I treat it like stepping on a scale. I limit it to once a week or so to try to focus on trends, and this effort typically makes up my Saturday morning.
Up until I read Identity's post - this is how I did it. Just like SEO Columbus.
Am I up or down from last week (or the last time I remember checking)?
I used to monitor name and website mentions using Google alerts - but I never kept track of how many occurred in any given time period.
I'm the same way Rand. Charts, graphs, stats - keep 'em coming. I couldn't live without my seoquake toolbar.
Nobody's using Nielsen BuzzMetrics or similar? ;)
Nice blog piece Rand - It's nice to have a collective place to show various metrics for measuring results.
Good stuff Rand.
Always check the last page!
While it may be soooo 1999, I do like to check my rankings as well. I like seodigger.com, as it will bring up terms that you rank in the top 20 for.
"Even bad stats are better than no stats" :)
Sounds like mysteryguest needs to check you into some sort of rehab. Is there a clinic for recovering SEOs? If not, there may be a market...
I know what you mean about being obsessed with the stats. Not to the same degree as you but I think a lot of us waste way too much time watching our sites.
Good 'Membership Signup Bait'. The mention of the Rank Checker is very interesting. The fact you get us hooked with 5 searches, very smart. I hang out here a lot . . . almost have me convinced to get a membership. ;-)
Come on, pull the trigger, it's good stuff and worthwhile. And it's always a good feeling to support good people too.
Rand I mostly rely on Google search for statistics.
I google my brand and get to see who links to it. If its hot or cold. I pertty much know what is going and where.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=igor+the+troll&btnG=Search
It help to have a unique brand, verses a generic name like My Seo.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=My+Seo&btnG=Search 32 million hits
But if you do chose to go generic join the keywords MySeo on your title and your user id
https://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=MySeo&btnG=Google+Search 20,000 hits
But https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=rand is #4 from 56 million
Rand I am jelous..:)
my seomoz profile ranks on page 1 for just my first name, below mentions of the firearm manufacturer.
Nice post Rand, you give a lot of sources to check stats for different purposes.Personally, I can't stop checking statcounter, which is the analytics I use. I use it as my homepage and I must check it every hour. What I like about it is that it gives you real time visitor’s information (something that google analytics does not provide) so if someone sends you an email using the online form, you can actually track it down and know where it came from and the pages he visited.Referring sites and engines, popular pages and keyword analysis are the stats that I look the most. I also use SEOmoz tools to track other websites (from competitors)
hi,
i mostly look at ggogle pr,links and blog links.though you mentioned quite more indicators.i would try to keep track of them.thanx it was useful info.
with regards m07