These sites spider google with a search query. When doing this, they mimic the behavior of a real user: browsing speed, user agent, …
After parsing information they can construct a ranking.
You can do this yourself in PHP, using the cURL library.
I can recommend “Webbots, Spiders and Screenscrapers”. I contains really everything you need to know on this topic and includes a library for the easy parsing of web pages.
Regards,
Shanmuga Sundaram
I just use Google Analytics. Pretty reliable and breaks down the key words well, but isn’t realtime…
Other than Analytics, I believe all of those tools violate Google’s guidelines.
Wow, this thread has some great info and links to some interesting tools. this will keep me busy for a whole afternoon, figuring out what I need to do for my sites to improve the user experience, as well as the search engine optimization.
Google analytics also checks keyword rankings??? I thought they were for just traffic checking. I guess i didnt check all of its features yet.
perhaps try google analytics, they monitor keyword ranks
try this one http://www.seologs.com/dc-rank-check.html
Which tools violate guidelines?
Would love to hear more on that.
This is old stuff guys. Google has had that in their guidelines for years now.
“Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc.”
Any tool that queries Google, so all of them…
Hehe, I guess nobody reads the guidelines anymore. 
But then again, they’re only guidelines…
You might want to try this SEO tracking tool
Ok, thx for your information so far. I´m sure I have a lot of to learn about the stuff
Google monitor from www.cleverstat.com is a very easy to use and good tool.
Thanks for the lot of tools and advice…
I’d like to find out how/where I can check my keyword rankings using Analytics, can anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks,
Konrad
I’m not sure that there is a ranking report for keywords in Analytics. Google Webmaster Central has one although it is limited in that, you can’t put a keyword and see where you rank for that keyword, instead it gives you a list of keywords that have generated traffic and where you rank with those keywords.
I am loving the tools available here. You can even add a rss feed to your page to watch the tracking. You can set it up to track monthly, weekly or daily. I look forward to seeing how it works over the next month or so.
check out www.stuffedtracker.com