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Tracker Error - No results available.

Discussion in 'Keyword Tracker' started by alemcherry, Mar 6, 2013.

  1. #1
    Keyword Tracker used to work perfect till yesterday and I am a big fan. However, since last few hours, I am getting this error:

    The following error occurred:
    No results available.


    I have added a new API key, but same result. Any help fixing this will be really appreciated.
     
    alemcherry, Mar 6, 2013 IP
  2. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #2
    Double check that the script you installed for it on your server is still there?
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 6, 2013 IP
  3. alemcherry

    alemcherry Well-Known Member

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    #3
    It is. When accessed directly from browser (with no post/get), it shows
    a:1:{s:7:"results";s:4:"9999";}
    Any idea?
     
    alemcherry, Mar 6, 2013 IP
  4. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #4
    That looks normal there... Are you using the latest version of the script just to be sure?
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 6, 2013 IP
  5. alemcherry

    alemcherry Well-Known Member

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    #5
    Yes, I am. Updated 1-2 weeks back.
     
    alemcherry, Mar 6, 2013 IP
  6. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #6
    Go ahead and try it now... looks like Google made a minor change to their API.
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 6, 2013 IP
  7. alemcherry

    alemcherry Well-Known Member

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    #7
    It is working now! :) Thanks a lot, Shawn.
     
    alemcherry, Mar 6, 2013 IP
  8. alemcherry

    alemcherry Well-Known Member

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    #8
    Just realized, 'check all rankings' doesn't work - shows N/A for all keywords. Individually checking each one of them, works perfect.
     
    alemcherry, Mar 7, 2013 IP
  9. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #9
    Sorry about that... give it a try now. Forgot there was a separate module for the "check all" function.
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 7, 2013 IP
  10. dealeron

    dealeron Member

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    #10
    Can you shed some light on this change Google made? It looks like they don't like it if you pass in an empty CSE list anymore. I noticed when your server pings the tracker script it's now passing in a specific cx ID. I assume that's a SE you setup that is set to 'search the general web' without promoting any particular sites?

    If so that makes the results insanely unreliable compared to previous. I do SEO work for car dealerships. I track their keywords both for high-level terms like 'Los Angeles Nissan' as well as longer tail like '2013 Nissan 370Z Los Angeles'. The long tail rankings are particularly skewed. Of course nobody's to say what the 'actual' rank of a keyword is given how subjective Google's rankings are, but even if you turn off personalization (&pws=0), or even if I set my location to the locale of the site, I still get results way off from what the API is returning.

    Actually I'm searching those terms except in Frederick not LA. Looking for the site fredericknissan.com. Take a look and see what you come up with. The longtail search returns 0 but it's at least #5.

    Any ideas Shawn?
     
    Last edited: Mar 9, 2013
    dealeron, Mar 9, 2013 IP
  11. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #11
    Google personalizes pretty much every result... so what you see as search results aren't necessarily what your neighbor sees. The best thing to do is just use it as a baseline tool... are you moving up or down generally.
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 9, 2013 IP
  12. dealeron

    dealeron Member

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    #12
    Yeah, I got that, but there is a big difference between page 1 and page 4, regardless of personalization, set location, and cache/search history. Before this API change, my empirical results showed 80%+ accuracy over 70% of the time. Now I'm showing <30% accuracy >90% of the time. This is bad news for my sales team who uses our "seo report card" as a selling tool. I'm checking out SEO suite now and others but they're not returning reliable data either.

    Doing this type of stuff is expressly against Google's TOS. That's why they killed the old search API in favor of the CSE, I assume.
     
    dealeron, Mar 9, 2013 IP
  13. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #13
    I've never seen anything saying it was against their ToS... in reality the CSE change was actually fixing a long-standing bug in their API. It was always intended to work the way it works now. I've not noticed any drastic changes, but I also haven't done an extensive study on it either... generally speaking, it all looks pretty normal to me though.
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 9, 2013 IP
  14. ryan_uk

    ryan_uk Illustrious Member

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    #14
    To set the locale, are you using gl=xx (where xx is the country code)? I always get accurate results (as in country specific without personalisation).

    https://www.google.com/search?q=banks&pws=0&gl=us
    Code (markup):
    As an example of what I use.

    Although I never go down to regional level. (I just experimented with it once and just a pointless pain in the arse.)

    You might want to consider the ranking data in Google Webmaster Tools (plus you don't skew search volumes for your terms, where it's low). It gives an average position, yes, but it's based upon real data from actual searches. Due to personalisation and regional variations, an average gives a truer reflection of where you stand for the people who are searching for the terms.
     
    ryan_uk, Mar 9, 2013 IP
  15. dealeron

    dealeron Member

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    #15
    I'm not a stranger to these concepts, but what I'm saying is that the results are WAY off. I've tweaked all of the personalization settings. I am attaching an example of a report we ran, comparing RankChecker results to API results. The RankChecker results were checked by hand in the way Ryan indicated above and we corrected differing results. Take a look. I have more examples I can post.

    Am I seriously the only one who's noticed a sudden and extreme shift? I mean, the online market I'm in is very niche (automotive dealers) and insanely competitive in some instances, but there must be other people experiencing this since the API changes.
     

    Attached Files:

    dealeron, Mar 9, 2013 IP
  16. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #16
    Not sure... if you have an example of a keyword/URL combo (exactly as entered into the Keyword Tracker), I could take a look, but ultimately it's a reporting tool... If it's reporting correctly based on what Google tells us, there's not a lot we can do to change that (if we could, we would just put ourselves at #1 for every keyword). :)
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 9, 2013 IP
  17. AmHomeMaint

    AmHomeMaint Peon

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    #17
    Does not seem to work for Us?
     
    AmHomeMaint, Mar 15, 2013 IP
  18. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #18
    Need to be a little more specific. Lol
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 15, 2013 IP
  19. AmHomeMaint

    AmHomeMaint Peon

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    #19
    Sorry about the lack of clarity. My assistant and myself have tried using the PageRank tool, and we don't get any results. Is the data being stored in another place? Thanks for your reply.
     
    AmHomeMaint, Mar 15, 2013 IP
  20. digitalpoint

    digitalpoint Overlord of no one Staff

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    #20
    Can you post a screenshot of what you are seeing? Not sure what you would be looking it within the keyword tracker.
     
    digitalpoint, Mar 15, 2013 IP