UPDATE on Google API Project

I fired off an email to S_ _ _ _, trying to get some clarification, and with an update. S_ _ _ _ shot back an answer, showing that he/she's already got quite a bit of insight on this project. Further proof that my readers are, in fact, some of the brightest excel users already...they're just looking to me to help them tweak the masterpieces they've already built! (Hope I can live up to that.) Anyway, I thought all of you might find the subject matter interesting, so here're the emails:

Excel_Geek to S_ _ _ _ :

I have a question and an update:

Question: When you say, "# of competing websites for the search term" do you mean the total number of search results for a given search term, or do you mean the number of Google Adwords client advertisers who have purhcased that particular search term? Obviously the two are vastly different, and getting the latter, if even possible, would require me to be an Adwords client (which I'm not) so I could get access to the Adwords API. What I don't know is if I did have access to the Adwords API if it gives out that sort of information.

Update: Backlinks? Totally doable with the Google Search API. URL? Totally doable with the Google Search API (even without it). PageRank? Hmmmm.....This is what seemingly everyone is trying to achieve (so I've found). Google doesn't make this data readily available via API, and they stopped placing PageRank in their search results pages long ago, but there is the Google Toolbar, which displays the PageRank. I found one application in DOS that returns the PageRank, but it isn't useful to me. I have some ideas on how we might get this data via the toolbar....I'll keep you posted.

Excel_Geek

S_ _ _ _ to Excel_Geek :

Hi,

Answer to the question : I mean the total number of websites for the search term, which google displays in the SERP top left corner. (such as Results 1 - 10 of about 1,720,000,000 for web sites. (0.23 seconds) )

Side Info : I already have a program called keyword analyzer (http://www.keywordsanalyzer.com) which can fetch the number of google campaigns and top bids (exact, broad and phrase match options seperately). I guess this also handled with SOAP, similar to what you have done.

PageRank : There are a few sites which can fetch the pagerank (in text or in graphics) for a given keyword, most of them use ASP or PHP. Here are a few references. It might help.

http://www.thinkbling.com/serps/serps.php
http://www.mcdar.net/KeywordTool/keywordtool.asp
http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool/
http://www.splutweb.com/Tools/Tools.asp