The AJAX Search API is really not designed for SEO applications, even if you discount the discrepancy between its search results and those of the regular web interface. For one, it only returns a maximum of 64 results per query, across 8 separate requests. And for two, the TOS explicitly forbid the use of automated applications to submit queries.
Beyond that, taking the average search placement wouldn't really help all that much because searches are cached, and that cache is shared between servers, etc. Further, for security reasons, Google closely guards the number and locations of their servers, which are actually spread around the world to ensure maximum performance on a global scale. To give you an idea of the scale of their operation, check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRwPSFpLX8I Just this one data center has slots for more than 45,000 servers, and they have several data centers. Jeremy R. Geerdes Effective website design & development Des Moines, IA For more information or a project quote: http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.com http://jgeerdes.blogspot.com http://jgeerdes.wordpress.com [email protected] Unless otherwise noted, any price quotes contained within this communication are given in US dollars. If you're in the Des Moines, IA, area, check out Debra Heights Wesleyan Church! And check out my blog, Adventures in Web Development, at http://jgeerdes.blogspot.com ! On Aug 25, 2009, at 4:55 PM, kintan wrote: > > Since there are discrepancies in the search results returned by the > AJAX API's and manual search results, what would be an ideal way to > track search ranks? Would measuring the search rank at multiple > instances and taking an average help at all or the data would be still > statistically insignificant, as we may not be able to hit all Google > servers? > > Does anyone know how many Google servers are there and what's the > variance in search ranks/index across these servers? > Thanks > Kintan > > On Aug 19, 9:01 am, Jeremy Geerdes <[email protected]> wrote: >> Actually, the API's estimatedResultCount is notoriously inaccurate >> and >> varies wildly, even on different pages of the same result set. It's >> actually a known issue. Check out the two related issues (and star >> them!): >> >> http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/detail?id=32http://code.google.com/p/google-ajax-apis/issues/detail >> >> ?id=4 >> >> Jeremy R. Geerdes >> Effective website design & development >> Des Moines, IA >> >> For more information or a project quote:http://jgeerdes.home.mchsi.comhttp >> ://jgeerdes.blogspot.comhttp://jgeerdes.wordpress.com >> [email protected] >> >> Unless otherwise noted, any price quotes contained within this >> communication are given in US dollars. >> >> If you're in the Des Moines, IA, area, check out Debra Heights >> Wesleyan Church! >> >> And check out my blog, Adventures in Web Development, >> athttp://jgeerdes.blogspot.com >> ! >> >> On Aug 19, 2009, at 10:50 AM, gaston wrote: >> >> >> >>> I would guess that results depend on which Google server serves your >>> query. I'm doing some experiments and I've notice that the estimated >>> number of results differs dramatically between queries posted to >>> Google through the API and through the browser. >> >>> Again, my guess is that it depends on the indexes and which server >>> you >>> hit >> >>> Gaston >> >>> On Aug 4, 3:31 pm, Adam <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> Hi >> >>>> I'm having an issue with Google AJAX API search results. There's a >>>> page on my site that is not returned in my site search but is when >>>> searching via google.com. >> >>>> If I search google for "site:audleytravel.com chiawa", the first >>>> result (Chiawa Camp in The Lower Zambezi) is what I'm after. >> >>>> If I use the search api with the same request, the result is not >>>> listed: >> >>>> http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/web? >>>> v=1.0&q=site:audl... >> >>>> I believe the syntax is ok, as I'm getting lots of pages from my >>>> domain that mention 'chiawa', just not that actual page. >> >>>> Any help appreciated! >> >>>> Cheers, Adam > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google AJAX APIs" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/google-ajax-search-api?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
