how long?

[Sebastian]

is their an accurate way to find your search engine position

There is a way to check rankings:
Do a search for your targeted keywords and count the results before your position. Unfortunately the ie searches at Google are served from a strange index, so you don't get numbered results. Most SEs deliver 10 or 20 results per page (as long as you don't change it), so counting is not that hard.
Or check your referrer stats and click the links to SERPs. This is more effective, because you check the rankings for keywords surfers are using.
With all SEs except Google you can use automated ranking checkers.