Rank Tracking

What is Rank Tracking?

Rank Tracking monitors your site's position in the Google search results for the keywords you choose. It's built on your Google Search Console data, so it reports the positions Google itself recorded for your site. It updates once a day with the latest position for every keyword you track, along with the daily change. It also shows the average position from 7, 30, 90, and 365 days ago, so you can see longer-term trends.

Why use Rank Tracking?

Because the data comes from Search Console rather than from scraping the search results, you are looking at Google's own record of how your site performed. This is useful for:

• Seeing whether a position is actually earning anything - position sits next to clicks, impressions, and click-through rate, so a top-three ranking that brings in no traffic is obvious straight away.
• Backdating a keyword you have only just added - you get 16 months of history from the day you start tracking, so you can check how a keyword has behaved without having had the foresight to track it.
• Tying movement to something you did - annotate the graph when you make a change, and see algorithm updates marked automatically alongside it.
• Reporting at country level - track how you rank in a single market rather than across a blended global average.

Where to find Rank Tracking

From the Launchpad, select the website at the top of the page that you wish to use rank tracking for, then from the left-hand menu select 'Rank Tracking'.

Adding keywords

There are three ways to add a keyword to Rank Tracking:

• One at a time within Rank Tracking. To do this, click on the 'Actions' button at the top right on the page, then select 'Add Keyword'. Optional: Specify a target URL to track if it ranks for this keyword, and add tags at the same time. Read more about tags here - Adding tags.
• In bulk, by CSV. To do this, click on the 'Actions' button at the top right on the page, then select 'Upload'. Upload a file with a header row and one keyword per line. The Target URL column is optional, so a file with just a Keyword column works.
• From a query report. On the All Queries Report and the other query lists, the first arrow icon in each row's action icons adds that query to Rank Tracking in one click. If the list is split by page, that page becomes the keyword's target URL. A keyword that is already tracked is not added twice.

How to use Rank Tracking

• Country-level tracking - When you add a site to SEOTesting you can filter all of its data to a specific country - this allows you to also track keywords ranking down to the country level as well.
• Historical data - You can view a keyword's position as far back as 16 months, even for a keyword you have only just started tracking. The history is held in Google Search Console and retrieved for you, so adding a keyword today still gives you 16 months of data to look at. SEOTesting also reports on the keyword clicks, impressions and click through rate data directly from Google Search Console.
• Annotating a keyword graph - You can add annotations to a keyword's graph to mark when you made a change intended to affect its position. SEOTesting also annotates Google algorithm updates automatically, so you can see whether a movement lines up with one. See How to annotate SEOTesting graphs.
• Organising a long keyword list - Once you are tracking more than a handful of keywords, you can tag them, filter and group the table by tag, and use Auto Tag to sort an existing list for you.
• Sharing your rankings - Rank Tracking supports the Share button, so you can send someone your rankings without them needing an SEOTesting account. See Share a test or report with someone using a Magic Link.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many keywords can I track?

You can add up to 500 keywords.

How fresh is the data?

Search Console data is at least two days old, so there is a short lag between a position changing and that change appearing here.

Can I track my competitors' rankings?

No. Search Console only holds data for your own site, so Rank Tracking covers your site only.

Why is there no position for one of my keywords?

Google Search Console doesn't report a position when your site didn't appear in the results. That usually means one of three things: your page ranks far enough down that nobody scrolls to it, you don't have a page ranking for that keyword at all, or nobody is searching for it.

Updated on: 10/09/2026