Which "direction" does keyword tracker first look when can't find SERP?

[hulkster]

Shawn,

As you know, I've used the keyword tracker for quite some time and it ROCKS. I'm wondering what your "hunt" algorithm is for when a keyword isn't found in the last position?

I.e. I've had the keyphrase "christmas lights" in there for quite some time ... and it is mostly at the bottom of the first page ... but sometimes drops to the second page ... but recently (according to the keyword tracker) it dropped all the way to the third page. I finally decided to look into this, and what had happened is the main christmas lights URL (http://www.komar.org/xmas/) had climbed back into the top page, but what keyword tracker was "stuck" on was a second christmas lights URL (http://www.komar.org/cgi-bin/xmas_webcam) of mine. Here's a clickable Google link (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=christmas+lights&btnG=Search) if that is useful to 'ya.

Now I know you talk about this in your FAQ and seen people get confused by this ... and YES, a "CHECK ALL" fixed things ... but I'm kinda curious what exactly the keyword tracker does when it can't find a SERP?

I.e. in this case, assume the last "known" position was #13 ... so it uses the API to look in results on the second page (11-20) ... not finding it, which direction does it look first ... and does it matter if the last known position was #11 or #20?

I guess what I'm wondering/suggesting is perhaps in this case a bias to look UPWARDS first, and then DOWN would not have caused this to happen as it would have picked up the top-10 result before looking at the 21-30 entries and finding that second page of mine. Maybe you allready do this, but I'm thinking one always wants to see the "best" results! ;-)

Hope that all makes sense,
alek

[digitalpoint]

It always looks for better positions first. For example, if you are set to look 50 deep, and the last known position was 35, the search grouping will be as follows:

31-40
21-30
11-20
1-10
41-50

With it stopping after it finds a match.

[hulkster]

OK - you answered my question - musta just been some wierd "burp" that got it "stuck" on the 3rd page (results 21-30) and since it DID find (the second) www.komar.org page there, it (rightfully so) continued to report that one rather than re-search for the first one.

Thanx Shawn ... and good night! ;-)

alek