How do I retrieve crawl and ranking data about a site from the past?

[creativeguy]

Hey.

One of my main clients has asked to see the crawl data and rankings data for the past eight months.

He wants to have tangible evidence of the effects of Penguin.

I would like that info too.

Is it possible to retrieve that information on a weekly crawl and ranking basis through SEO Moz and if so, how do you do it?

I simply want to show a graph, timeline and brief explanation across several main keywords...

Help me as you guys always do -

You rock

Best

Ben

[benjaminspak]

Hey Ben how long have you been tracking this client's site in SEO Moz?

[Thos003]

An account with SEOmoz does give you historical ranking information... but only from the time you created your account. There is no system that will give you historical rankings from a date prior to beginning the ranking log. There are other factors you could use to determine if your site was hit and possibly determine a loss in ranking. General traffic loss would be the prime indicator. If your traffic took a huge dive when penguin went live then you can likely attribute that loss to the update.

As far as keywords go, you can compare keyword traffic to your site before and after the date. Sadly "Not Provided" can skew this data. You would need to look for changes greater than the "Not Provided" average. Most changes, however, are based on so few numbers that the margin for error is pretty high.

Honestly your best bet is to look at pre and post penguin traffic. I have a site that dropped by half. Conclusively a penguin attack.