I use this tool called Free Monitor For Google. It helps me see where my keywords are ranking. I was wondering -- could something like this be risky for my SEO? Could google know I am up to something?
Automated keyword ranking tool..Hmmm. Google in my opinion despises automated tools as they put an extra burden on their resources and to some extent skew their search data. It did ban webposition gold from extracting automated search rankings. It may ban the tool or the IP from were the tool is run but I don't see it having any negative repercussion on you website. By the way, how accurate is the tool. The ones I have tested so far are all unreliable.
I am not sure they will 'ban' domains for using this site At max they will ask user to enter captcha or ban that IP. If you see an adverse impact on domain, please let me know !! I will hire an army of people to ensure they keep using this software for my competitor's domains !!
Yeh ranking tools are far from reliable at this point but not to say this isn't an exception to the case, I'm with OnlineVista and would love to know how well this one performs.
per Google: "Don't use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Goldâ„¢ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google"
It will not effect your domain at all, Free Monitor tool does NOT transmit your domain to Google. All it does is fetch the top 50/100 or whatever results you have it set to, Google has no way to know what domain amongst that is yours or even if your domain is in the results you fetched. Your ranking is calculated within the tool on your PC "after" it has fetched the SERP's. But if you query too much, your computers IP can be flagged and blocked.