I am thinking of developing my own keyword rank checker tool. For this two things are required. 1) firing exact query in your browser for a particular keyword Ex: if you want to search top 50 result in Google.com for "web design" Query: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=web+design&num=50 here "q=your query"; "num=number of result you want to display" Query: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=web+design&num=50&start=50 here start=50 means that your display will start from 50th position in web design keyword Now the problem: The problem is that when you check the page source then you will find that it is not possible to extract these links for checking where your website resides within the page. So a suggestion will be appreciable.
Oh yes, it's possible. You have to use regular expressions to get all the links from the source. I prefer using pcre functions, because I'm most used to those. Then you check on which place of the array you get, the url you are looking for is placed (if it's at all on that array). You should search for regular expresions tutorials, that will give you a place to start.
Yes we need to study regular expression to do it easily. One thing we have to make sure that give proper delay b/w the each page fetch from google, otherwise google may barn your site. I think preg_match_all function will help you. Check it in php manual http://in3.php.net/manual/en/function.preg-match-all.php
Yes you are right,i have build a tool which will show your keyword ranking from global to your localized search. It performed well when i have checked in local server. But when i upload the files in web server then it's returning google warning. Now i am trying this using Google API key but still fighting with Google supplied javascript. Let's see what comes to me.
If you're going to build a ranking tool, you need to make it look like a human. This means you have to build in some random human behavior. For example, you should have a setting that says wait at LEAST XX seconds between each query... but randomly add up to YY seconds to that delay. So if XX is 20 seconds and YY=27 seconds then your queries would each randomly range between 20 and 47 seconds between each. You'll also want the ability to delete cookies after each query.