I just read an article on Google about rank checking software, and how it violates Googles terms of use.

I wonder if any of these ranking monitor programs give away the identity of the domain being rank checked? If so, it would be possible for Google to penalize your site for violating their terms of use.

Scary thought......

Load of rubbish, google gives out api number to query their database for automated programs

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I thought the same thing, I have a Google API key, and I'm trying to figure out what's up with this double standard....

Here is the quote right off their page:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/facts.html

I think it is refering to any system not using the api, at least with the api they can limit the number of queries. 1000 a day I beleive.

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Are you referring to checking your position in the SERP or your page rank?

Yes I understand now that it's ok as long as it is using the Google API key.
They don't want any kind of software querying their serps because of the load, so they made the API so the number of queries can be controlled, and separated form their main front end. Now it completely makes sense.

There is no possible way they would EVER penalize a website because it was run through a program that violated their TOS, the reason being is often times your competitor will toss thier 1000 keywords into web position gold or the like, and then check "your" domain to see how you stack up. What they CAN do is block the IP that you are querying from if to much abuse is coming from that IP, however this will not effect your domain at all, just your ability to interact with Google from that IP whether your home or office.

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Someone I know, wrote a Google SERP tool that doesn't retrieve the result through the Google API, instead it retrieves the search result just like any other browser would. Also the program waits 5-8 seconds between each page request, all this to look like any other normal Google visitor. What I'm curious about is if the Google API call always returns the same results as a search using a browser would. Has anyone tried to verify this?

API in my instance has shown to be slightly ahead of the browser search. For example one of my new sites was shown to be indexed by the api query but not by the google browser search. Two days later it appeared in their google browser search.

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Like Seo Guy said, Google can't penalize you for things that you dont control... If this was true, Google, Amazon, MSN, Yahoo! and others, wich are sites that are normally used for examples in those kind of scripts would be doomed... Anyway, stick with the good tools that use the API

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