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Overview
Overview of site contents. Includes site map, glossary, and quick start checklist.
SEO
Contains information about keywords, on page SEO, link building, and social interaction.
PPC
Tips on how to buy traffic from search engines.
Tracking
Learn how to track your success with organic SEO and PPC ads. Includes information about web analytics.
Credibility
Creating a credible website is core to being linkworthy and selling to customers.
Monetization
Learn how to make money from your websites.
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Links to useful audio and video information. We will create new SEO videos every month.
Interviews
Exclusive member only interviews.
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Site Map
View all our training modules linked to on one page.




Free Search Engine Ranking Checking Tool for Firefox

Rank Checker.

Please visit this page to install Rank Checker.

Set up your free SEO Book account, and you will get this tool + 2 other SEO tools valued at over $300 for free. Already have an account? Log in and your installation link will appear in the place of this message.

Why do Over 500,000 Webmasters Use Rank Checker?

Want to know where your website ranks in the search results? Our Firefox Rank Checker extension allows you to easily check your website rankings in Google (US and international), Microsoft's Bing, & Yahoo Search.

Introduction Video

Want to learn more? Watch this video and/or read on.

Download & Installation Instructions

  • While our extensions were originally created for the Firefox web browser around a decade ago (and survived about a decade of browser updates by being frequently updated over the years), the Firefox 57 update killed any extension using toolbars. Thus we now recommend using Waterfox for continued extension use.
    • install the Waterfox web browser & add our extensions to it
      • once the browser is installed come back to this page using Waterfox
      • our extensions were originally created for Firefox, but after Firefox lost marketshare to Chrome they stopped supporting toolbars & their old extension framework, which is still supported by Waterfox

Download Now!

  • If the Software Installation window is visible click Install Now.
  • If not, then:
    • See if there is a yellow bar near the top of your browser.
    • Click the Edit Options button on the yellow bar.
    • Click Allow. Then click OK. Then download now
    • Click the Install Now button.
  • As a final step, restart Firefox. If you want to install all 3 tools before restarting Firefox then that works too. :)

Click on the words Rank Checker in the bottom of your Firefox browser to activate the tool. Enter a URL and keyword combination and click the start button to check it's rankings.

Off the start this tool is set up to grab data from the Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft SERPs. After you install Firefox Rank Checker and restart your browser you may want to configure the extension settings to automatically collect data periodically and/or pull data from international Google search results.

The Theory...

I like being able to check my rankings real quickly without worrying that some SEO company is aggregating my data and/or spying on me. This tool is open source and hosted on your computer - designed with privacy in mind.

Looking at the rankings of a couple of your sites that you know intimately well and tracking how they change over time allows you to

  • learn how to read the search results
  • appreciate and understand general algorithmic trends
  • be one of the first people to know when the relevancy algorithms change in a major way

This tool is designed to be quick and easy to use, but to also give you the opportunity to gain the level of insight needed to compete with other SEOs at the professional level. Here is an image of what the tool looks like:

Interpreting the results

  • If your site is not listed in the top 200 results you will see a - (there are a few of them in the above picture).
  • If you have long URLs and/or long keywords some of them may be cut off in the results display. If that happens you can still see the full page names and keywords by scrolling over them.
  • You can verify your position in the search results by scrolling over the rank number, holding down control, and clicking your mouse on the number...this will open the associated search results in Firefox.
  • If you are logged into your Google account in Firefox this tool will show you personalized ranking results (which tend to make the rankings appear better than they are in many cases). If you want to, you can turn personalized web search off in the Rank Checker options / preference settings window.

First Things First:

In the status bar at the bottom of Firefox you can click on the Rank Checker icon at any time to turn this extension on.

This extension has courtesy settings which allow you to ping search engines for data at a slow rate. You probably want to set the delay to at least 2 or more seconds. If you set it at 0 do not be surprised if some of the engines at least temporarily block you for scraping data. To set the courtesy feature you need to

  • click on the word Tools at the top of your Firefox browser
  • scroll over the words Rank Checker
  • click on the word Options
  • at the bottom of the options window you can enter in the Delay between queries: whatever value you feel comfortable with (in seconds)

Uploading Keyword/ Website Data

You can upload keyword and domain name combinations directly in the Rank Checker interface by inserting them one at a time.

Next to the add keyword button is a link for adding multiple keywords. It allows you to upload a keyword list matching a domain.

If you want to quickly create a relevant keyword list just to sample how well your site is doing I recommend using our keyword research tool, or our keyword list generator.

If after using the tool you want to clear out the interface you can simply close the tool, or if you want to use it again you can click the clear button.

Firefox Rank Checker Extension Advanced Features:

This free rank checking tool allows you to check your rankings in Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Live search results, and has the following features:

  • International: in the options section (mentioned above) you can select to pull results from international versions of Google and/or Google.com.
  • Presets: allows you to grab a list of keywords that you can research data on at any given point in time.
    • useful for segregating data for different websites, different categories, etc.
    • you can save a preset list by clicking on this button inside of the Rank Checker interface
    • you can open a preset list by clicking on this button inside of the Rank Checker interface
  • Scheduled Tasks: allows you to look up any of your keyword lists daily, weekly, monthly, or at any periodicity you choose.
    • After you have created a preset list of keywords you can use this feature
    • To use this feature
      • click on the word Tools at the top of your Firefox browser
      • scroll over the words Rank Checker
      • click on the words Scheduled Tasks
      • at the bottom of the scheduled tasks window you can what keyword lists you want to run and how often to look them up

Want to Export Your Data?

With our free rank checker you can easily export your data to a CSV file. At the bottom of the tool window there is an export button for saving a spreadsheet of your rankings, which is convenient for providing a quick ranking report for clients.

These results can be viewed in any spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel, Google Docs, or Open Office.

Inside the presets window there is the option to download the history of that keyword list to a CSV file, which shows you how your rankings for keywords change over time

This spreadsheet lists historical data for one keyword at a time

Possible Future Upgrades:

Data Conflict Issues

Google

3 things that may cause results to differ when you use Rank Checker vs when you search Google directly.

  1. personalization - if personalization is on (which is on by default when you search) then the results you see might be different than the results other see. This is true even if you are not logged into an account results can be altered by your recent prior search queries & the location of your computer. To remove personalization bias, we offer an option that turns it off.
  2. clustering - to send Google less queries we grab 100 results per page. If 2 pages from the same site are in the search results they may be clustered together, so in many cases a low ranking page will see rankings shown even lower on our tool due to clustering. If you add &num=100 to the address bar in Google the results should be fairly well aligned with our tool.
  3. datacenter and algorithm changes - at different times of day your query might access different datacenters, and algo changes also happen all the time...Google did around 450 algorithm adjustments in 2007.

Even if the numbers do not exactly line up they are still good for helping you see the general ranking trends.

Bing / Yahoo! Search

  • In most markets Yahoo! Search is powered by Bing.
  • In Japan Yahoo! Search is powered by Google.

In spite of being built off the same underlying initial index, Yahoo! search results may be significantly different due to insertion of other Yahoo! properties like Tumblr in their organic results.

Other Useful Related Firefox Extensions and Goodies:

There are a number of other browser based extensions display other related SEO information. Advanced users may want to give SEO for Firefox a try. The SEO Toolbar is also easy to recommend, as it puts all kinds of useful data right in a toolbar. We offer a list of related useful extensions on our SEO extension page.

Have Feedback? Know of Any Conflicting Extensions?

If it does not work then throw your computer out the window, or leave feedback and read comments left by others here.

Gain a Competitive Advantage Today

Your top competitors have been investing into their marketing strategy for years.

Now you can know exactly where they rank, pick off their best keywords, and track new opportunities as they emerge.

Explore the ranking profile of your competitors in Google and Bing today using SEMrush.

Enter a competing URL below to quickly gain access to their organic & paid search performance history - for free.

See where they rank & beat them!

  • Comprehensive competitive data: research performance across organic search, AdWords, Bing ads, video, display ads, and more.
  • Compare Across Channels: use someone's AdWords strategy to drive your SEO growth, or use their SEO strategy to invest in paid search.
  • Global footprint: Tracks Google results for 120+ million keywords in many languages across 28 markets
  • Historical performance data: going all the way back to last decade, before Panda and Penguin existed, so you can look for historical penalties and other potential ranking issues.
  • Risk-free: Free trial & low monthly price.
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