How long would it take to see results to a site:mywebsite.com search?

I'm kicking myself, because I didn't do a site:mywebsite.com search on the various search engines for the forum I installed vBSEO on.

Are my results going to be skewed because I'm two days late after installing vBSEO or do you think I'll be ok because there shouldn't have been that much change?

Or perhaps a site:mywebsite.com search isn't the best way to track the progress of vBSEO. Is there a better way to do it?

i use google analytics, easier for me to see visits from unique users to see if it's bring in the people.

Ok, well I have had that running for a couple weeks as well, but the main question I'm looking to have answered is this:

"Are my results going to be skewed because I'm two days late after installing vBSEO or do you think I'll be ok because there shouldn't have been that much change?"

The site: search is not very reliable, but may help to show a general trend of indexing.

A stats package (such as Google Analytics) is preferred to monitor for traffic changes.

Your vBSEO sitemap can monitor crawling activity.

Hmmm, well then perhaps I'll look around Google analytics some more. I've had that installed for a few weeks in preperation for this test (and I also have AW Stats to watch the unique visitors / page views etc.)

So you think the best way would be to just watch where the traffic comes from now that it's installed? i.e. Watch the Google graph grow?

Ultimately, you should expect growth in your organic search engine referrals (# of hits from Google, etc).

Yah, and that's what I would assume.

Is there a really good way to observe this through google analytics? Or do you think the best way would be to just keep logs of my AWStats and look for traffic that comes via search engines?

I'm just trying to make sure my experiment is conducted with as much control as possible (obviously it's tough to control all the variables, but I'm holding off on the new forum skin and a few other things I have planned).

Thanks

Analytics is best. It allows you to plot your growth over time, etc.