Understanding Search Engine Reports and Visibility Statistics

Visibility Statistics is comprised of a table at the top to the Report page. This table shows at a glance such information as web page rankings for a report, positions gained or lost since the last time the report was run, and a visibility rating for those engines. The top row of the table contains position/ranking information for a report. The second row displays information on how many pages made a gain or loss in position since the last report. The third row displays number of Keywords and Engines selected for the report and a Visibility Ranking for the pages of the report.

Rankings

The Position Ranking section of the Visibility Statistics table displays the current number of pages found by Reporter in the first thirty positions for all keywords and engines selected. The results are further broken down into all the First Place positions, Top 5, Top 10, Top 20 and Top 30 Positions found. Each column in the table shows the number of pages found for that category including all those pages in the preceding columns.

Position Changes

The second row of the Visibility Statistics table displays how many positions have been gained or lost on all engines selected. The Gain shows how many pages found have made an improvement in position since the last time the report was run. Likewise, the Loss shows how many pages have lost position since the last report. Also shown is the number of positions that have remained the same. The last item in this row is a Total showing the total number of page positions Gained or Lost.

Visibility

The last row provides information on how many Keywords were reported in the report and how many engines were selected. The Visibility Ranking portion gauges how visible a web site appears based on the search engines and keywords selected.

The Visibility Ranking consist of a Visibility Percentage and a Visibility Score. The Visibility Score is achieved by assigning a point value to the highest position achieved on each keyword-engine pair (multiple domains are ignored). A point value is only awarded to the positions 1 through 30, with a position of 1 being awarded 30 points, position 2 is worth 29 points, 3 is 28 points and so on through 30 which is given 1 point. The points are then summed for all the engines in the mission. This total is the Visibility Score.

The Visibility Percentage is calculated using the Visibility Score and dividing it by the maximum points available. If the mission consisted of 2 engines and 2 keywords for each engine, then the maximum points possible would be 120, or 4 first place positions being awarded 30 points each.

As a result, the higher the percentage, the higher the visibility. If all 4 searches had returned a number one ranking the visibility score would be 120 and the visibility percentage would be 100%. Don't worry if you do not ever achieve a 100% score when targeting a large number of keywords. Few people reach or approach a "perfect" score. The purpose of this score is to simply give you a base line for monitoring improvement over time. Obviously the fewer keywords you target, the easier it will be to approach 100%. However, the greater the number of popular keywords you can achieve top rankings on within the major engines, the more traffic you can expect to receive. Traffic and the resulting sales should be your ultimate goal.