Since search engine results are the result of a mathematical formula, many people spend most of their time trying to figure out the formula so their sites will do better. While some of that effort is no doubt time well spent, there is clearly a lot of randomness which makes quantification of progress difficult. In particular I am thinking of newcomers who make a few changes to their website and think changes they see in their rankings the next day/week/month are the result of the changes they made. I have a site which has been up since 1999 and is DMOZ listed. For my main keyword I am normally in the #3 position. The one other good site (much larger) is #1 and for the last few months the #2 position is held by Microsoft for an accidential phrase which is completely irrelevant. This morning when I ran the keyword tracker my site was NOT in the top 50 and my competator was #1. However, the income was looking promising so that didn't seem right. I opened a browser window and did a Google search for the term. There I find I am in #1 position and my competator isn't on the first two pages! I understand this is probably the effect of different data centers. The point is to suggest new website publishers not take the numbers to seriously. Spend time optimizing your site, spend time adding content, but most of all, realize success/income is a long term process and don't get really excited by day to day fluctuations. The long term trend is what matters.