How to improve your ranking checks

Google has dramatically changed the filters that detect “unnatural” search behavior. They temporarily return no results if they are queried too often in a short time period from the same computer. The same problem occurs when Google detects an unnatural search behavior (for example when several result pages are queried for every keyword).

The average web surfer only looks at the first result page. It creates a very unusual pattern if several result pages are checked for each keyword. Unfortunately, it seems that Google blocks requests sooner now.

This is not an error in IBP. It doesn’t matter if the query has been performed with IBP, manually or with any other tool. It’s the frequency of the queries and the search depth that triggers the block.

Recommended settings for the ranking checker:

If you want to check the position of your web pages on Google, we recommend that you select the ‘100 results’ version:

Go to IBP > Rankings > Edit settings > Check search engines
Select a language and then select the ‘Google (100 results)‘ option that applies to your country.
Click ‘Check search depth‘ on the left side of the settings window.
Change the search depth to ‘1 page‘.

One page will contain 100 results in that case (representing 10 regular result pages). By choosing this option, you will send as few queries as possible to Google. It is important that you Change the search depth to 1 page. Otherwise, you will check several pages per keyword and that looks unnatural.

The different Google Versions in the ranking checker

The ranking checker in IBP now supports several variations of Google. For example, you can query the following Google.com variations:

Google.com:

This is the regular Google version that you get when you enter Google.com in your web browser.
Google.com (USA):

This is the regular Google version that you get when you enter Google.com in your web browser from a location within the USA.

If you access Google.com from outside the USA, you might get a different page if you enter Google.com in your web browser. The “Google.com (USA)” entry in IBP always uses the Google.com version that people from the US get. This entry is only relevant if you access Google.com from outside the USA.
Google.com (100 results):

If you choose this version, the ranking checker in IBP will get 100 result per result page. That means that you need fewer queries to get 100 results. Choose the “Google.com (100 results)” version in the ranking checker if you want to check many results. Important: Also change the search depth to one page in the settings of the ranking checker:

IBP > Rankings > Edit settings > Check search depth > Check result pages > 1

As each result page of this version contains 100 results, it is not necessary to check more than one result page.
Google.com (without Places):

If you select this version, the local ‘Places’ results will be filtered from the result list. Local Places results are results that are marked with a red pin on the result page. Local results are different based on the location from which you query Google.