How to use the rank tracker

This guide shows step by step how to track your website's Google positions in Seomaker: from adding keywords to reading the charts and exporting data. What the rank tracker measures and what it costs is described on its page.

Tutorial video

Watch a short video to see the rank tracker in action:

Step 1: Pick a project

• A project is your domain. You pick it in the project switcher on the top bar. Every project has its own rank tracker and its own keyword list.
• Default market: the project's country and language are the defaults for new keywords. You can change them when adding keywords and for every keyword separately.
• Slot limit: each active keyword takes one slot. A keyword is tracked once per project in each language, for one location and one device - you change them by editing the keyword. The limit counts active keywords across all projects on the account and depends on your plan (a free account: 5 keywords).

Step 2: Open the rank tracker

• Menu: in the menu on the left, pick Rank Tracker.
• Rules in short: the How it works button in the screen header sums up how slots are counted, when positions are checked and what the table markers mean.

Step 3: Add keywords

• Adding: click Add keywords and in the Add keywords window type or paste keywords, one per line or separated by commas. One add takes up to 100 keywords of up to 255 characters each, and duplicates are merged for you.
• Market: in Track the keywords for, choose the country and language of the results for the whole list.
• Suggested keywords: keywords your domain already shows up for in Google, sorted by search volume. Click a keyword to add it to the list.
• From other screens: on the Competitor Analysis and Keyword Research screens, select keywords and click Add to Rank Tracker. The add window opens with those keywords, ready to confirm.

Step 4: Set the country, language and device of a keyword

• Editing: in the row actions, choose Edit keyword to change the location, language or device of a keyword.
• Device: new keywords are tracked on Desktop. Switch to mobile results in the edit window by choosing Mobile.
• Location: tracking works at country level, without city-level locations.

Step 5: Wait for the first check

• Once a day: every active keyword is checked automatically once a day in Google's top 100 organic results. There is no manual refresh, and adding a keyword you already track does not trigger an extra check.
• Table markers: a spinner means today's check is still running, >100 means the keyword was checked and your site is not in the top 100, and - means there is no check in that window yet (that is how a freshly added keyword looks).
• Last update: this line in the screen header shows the date of the project's latest check.

Step 6: Read the table and the charts

• Today, Previous, Best 7d, Best 30d: today's position, the position at the check before it and the best position of the last 7 and 30 days, today included. Best 7d and Best 30d are not the position a week or a month ago, so these windows are never worse than today's number. Until today's check has run, Today shows the last check with its date. The arrow next to the number shows the change against the Previous column, usually the day before; when that check is older, for example after a pause, its date is shown under the number. A check more than 30 days older is not compared, so the Previous column shows a dash and there is no arrow.
• Ranking page: under the keyword you see the URL of the page that ranks. When several of your pages rank, the highest one counts.
• Searches/Mo: the monthly number of searches. N/A means we have no data for the keyword yet.
• Rank history: the button in the keyword row opens its 30-day, day-by-day chart, with the change against the previous check.
• Position distribution and Keyword changes: 30-day charts of the whole project. The first shows how many keywords rank 1, 2-3, 4-10, 11-20, 21-50, 51-100 and outside the top 100, the second how many went up and how many went down each day.
• Filter: with keywords tracked in several countries, use Filter by country.

Step 7: Preview Google results

• SERP preview: click the View SERP icon next to today's position to see today's top 100 organic results with titles, URLs and descriptions. Your domain is highlighted.
• Latest check: the window shows today's results, and until today's check is done the results of the previous check, with its date.

Step 8: Pause and delete keywords

• Pausing: Pause tracking in the row actions, or Pause selected for several keywords at once. A paused keyword is not checked and frees a slot of your plan. Activate tracking resumes the checks.
• Deleting: Delete keyword stops tracking the keyword in this project.

Step 9: Download the data

• Download: choose a dataset (Tracked keywords, Position history, Position distribution or Daily changes) and a format: CSV, Excel (XLSX) or For AI (Markdown), a ready-made prompt with the data to paste into an AI chat.
• Longer history: the position history export covers more than the 30 days shown on the charts.
• Plans: downloading data is part of the paid plans.

Positions in AI Overviews

The rank tracker measures positions in regular Google results. It does not check whether your site is cited in AI Overviews, but AI Overviews mostly take their sources from the top of the regular results.

When positions drop

Start with an SEO audit of your site: it shows the technical errors that may be behind a sudden drop.