(2)
I did a little poking around (hey, I'm a techie, that's what I like to do), and decided to look at why googlerankings.com is "under construction" all of a sudden (for about 3 weeks now) with their rank checking service.
Well, it appears they aren't so much "under construction", as they are simply blocked by Google. The interesting thing about that, is they claim to have been given permission to do it from Google as stated here. Personally, I always thought it was strange that Google gave them permission, while pretty much denying everyone else in the world.
Anyway, if you still want to use Google Rankings, you can do so by clicking here, but you will notice it kicks back the error it gets from Google (HTTP 403 Forbidden Access). Or at least it does until they look at their referrers and decide to not let people follow this link. :)
The lesson? If you want to check your rankings in Google, don't go around Google's terms of service. There are ways to legitimately check your rankings in Google, since Google gave developers access to the Google API. Two such services are the one we built, and SEO Count.
