Checking Rankings
- Updating Mechanism
- Configuring Preferred Search Engines
- Accessing Country-Specific Search Listings
- Tracking Multiple Websites (Competition Tracking)
- Monitoring Universal Search Listings
- Configuring Rank Checking Mode
- Configuring Ranking Difference
Updating Mechanism
To find out how you are ranking for a keyword (or a group of keywords), you will need to select the keyword(s) in your work area and run the Check Rankings command. There is a button for it on the Keywords toolbar.
Clicking the arrow next to the Check Rankings button will open a list with groups of keywords you can update:
- current selection,
- all keywords visible in the current workspace,
- all keywords from the project.
These same options are available through the Tools menu (Tools -> Check Rankings).
Alternatively, you can right-click on the keyword selection and choose the Check Rankings option from a context menu that opens up.
This will activate a pop-up wizard that will guide you through a couple of easy steps.
Step 1: Choose Search Engines
Rank Tracker will show you the list of preferred search engines. Please tick boxes next to search engines you would like to check or use the Select All/Select none button to quickly mark/unmark the whole list.
If a search engine you would like to check your rankings in does not appear on the list, please click the Add More SEs button. This will expand the full list of search engines Rank Tracker is synchronized with. Mark the ones you would like to use and click OK to close the window.
Once you are done with the selection, please click Next to proceed further.
Step 2: Search Process
Just sit back and relax while Rank Tracker visits the search engines you have selected and checks where your site is now ranking for the chosen keywords. The process can take a while depending on how many keywords and search engines you have selected, whether or not the Human Emulation feature is being used as well as the number of positions Rank Tracker will need to go through. Say, if it finds your URL on the first page of search results, it won't have to drill deeper into them. As a result, the search process will be completed faster. Basically, the higher a page ranks, the less time it will take to find it in search listings.
You can interrupt the process at any minute by clicking the Stop button. When the search is over, Rank Tracker will show you a brief keyword check summary. Please use the View logs link to get a detailed view.
You can click the Finish button to add the new data to your project, or you can click Cancel to start over and discard the findings.
Configuring Preferred Search Engines
In Rank Tracker, you can specify which search engine(s) you would like to monitor within each of your projects. The tool will remember the choice and use it whenever you click to check your rankings. This way, you won't have to scroll down the long list of 750 supported search engines each time you update your project.
You can edit your search engine selection at any time using the Preferred Search Engines menu under Preferences -> Preferred Search Engines. The search engines you select in this menu will appear in your reports.
Have you found your target search engine on the list? If not, please hurry up to file a free request for it!
Accessing Country-Specific Search Listings
Whenever possible, Google tries to offer its visitors goods and services located in their area. Even if you search for a generic term like "jazz dance classes" or "home food restaurant", you can end up with a list of places from the neighborhood. So if you find a page at #3 in Google, it doesn't necessarily mean that people from all over the world will be seeing the same picture as you are.
Would you like to know where exactly your pages are ranking in other countries? There are two ways to accomplish the task in Rank Tracker.
- You can change the IP address of your computer with the help of a proxy when updating your Rank Tracker projects. This way search engines will treat your search requests as if they were originating from another country.
- You can have Rank Tracker add a special geographic modifier (gl=countrycode for Google or lr=regioncode for Yandex) to search queries. Google and Yandex have introduced these parameters to let users choose countries they would like to get data for. Using this option isn't exactly the same as actually being in the selected country and searching from there, but at most times results are pretty close.
Here is a brief summary of differences between the two.
| Proxy | Geo Locations | |
| Check rankings in a foreign country | Recommended | Recommended |
| Check rankings in multiple foreign countries | Recommended | |
| Check rankings in a selected state/city | Recommended | |
| Show area-based ranking differences in reports | Recommended |
Please read further for more detailed descriptions.
Changing IP Address through Proxy
Reasons to enable
- Your business is targeted towards people from another country. For example, you offer rent apartments to Americans coming to stay in Buenos Aires. Your customers usually arrange for accommodation before arriving to Argentina. So you want to make sure the site is visible to searchers from the United States.
- You do SEO for clients who live abroad. Let’s say you live in China and work on a German sports club network website. Naturally, ranking reports you send to the owners should mirror the situation in their home fitness services market.
- The business you are promoting operates within a particular town/city (not the one you live in). So you need to be sure the site is visible to local searchers.
How the feature works
You will need a proxy server from your market area to get the feature working.
- Enable proxy usage under Preferences -> Proxy Settings
- Specify your proxy server access details (instructions available here)
- Re-check your site’s rankings in the usual way
If you are using the Proxy Rotation feature to prevent temporary blocks, please make sure all of the proxies on your list are also from the area you are monitoring. For this purpose the following features should be disabled:
- Look for new proxies when there are no alive proxies on the list
- Use direct connection if no proxies are available
Where to get proxies for the chosen country
- Let Rank Tracker find free proxies for you (the Proxy Search feature). As practice shows, free public proxies can get blocked and/or blacklisted quite fast. You can never how many other people are using them apart from you. That is why they need regular verification. Proxies that don't pass it should be removed from the list. If the number of valid proxies gets low, you should extend the list by adding new ones.
- Buy private proxies and import them to Rank Tracker (recommended). There are plenty of companies providing such services (Proxybonanza.org, Squidproxies.com, Anonymous-proxies.net and the like) so it shouldn't take long to find a suitable package.
Activating Custom Geo Location Search
Reasons to enable
- You need to monitor your site's rankings in multiple countries (Google and/or Yandex network);
- You want to create reports that outline the site's visibility for searchers from different areas;
- You'd rather not bother with proxies and settings.
How the feature works
1. Open your Rank Tracker project and go to Preferences -> Preferred Search Engines. Point the cursor to any search engine from the Google or Yandex network. Press the green cross-shaped button that appears (it will activate an advanced search settings menu).
2. Select a country to get results for and click OK. Repeat the procedure for each new country you'd like to target.
3. The countries you've selected will appear on your list of preferred search engines. Of course these aren't any new search engines but previously selected ones modified by geo location parameters.
If you'd like to take a certain geo version off the list, just hover your mouse towards it and click on the red hyphen-shaped button that appears.
Click OK to apply the settings and close the menu.
4. Update rankings in the usual way. If you switch to the detailed view, you'll see Rank Tracker checking the keywords in each of Google's geo locations you have chosen.
5. Customize your workspace to view the results Rank Tracker has discovered.
6. Get a picture of where Google searchers from selected countries are finding your site.
Tracking Multiple Websites (Competition Tracking)
Adding URLs to Project
Rank Tracker lets you manage up to 10 additional URLs within a single project (depending on the type of license). Although these may be both competitors' websites and websites (sections of a website) belonging to the same person/company, in this help tutorial we'll jointly refer to all of these additional URLs as "competitors".
To enable competition tracking, you will need to open an existing project created for a website you are primarily focused on (or to create a new project if necessary). Then please open the Competitors menu under Preferences -> Competitors and click Add.
It will activate the Add Competitor menu. Enter the URL of a competitor and assign a short name to the profile (it is under this name that the website will appear in your work area and in reports). Click on a square next to the Competitor's Short Name field and choose a color that will be used to illustrate the competitor's rankings on progress and visibility graphs.
Select all applicable options from the following:
- Include into reports and exports. Although the results of all ranking checks will be saved to your project file, you can choose when to show them on data export files and ranking reports and when not to.
- Include rankings of subdomains. Search engines treat subdomains (e.g. www.blog.domain.com and www.domain.com) as different sites. Selecting this option will prompt Rank Tracker to track both the primary version and the subdomain within the same project.
- Treat www and non-www versions of the domain as the same site. Sometimes there may be several versions of the same page in search results: one with the www part (http://www.domain.com/) and one without it (http://domain.com). When this feature is on, Rank Tracker will consider such URLs as belonging to the same site and will show you which one comes first on search results pages.
Please click OK when finished or click Cancel to discard the details you have entered.
Once you have filled out your competitors' profiles, Rank Tracker will automatically include them into all ranking checks. So to find out how your site is ranking against the competitors, simply launch a rankings update in the usual way. Since Rank Tracker will need to check the listings of several sites instead of one, updating a project with competitors can take longer (especially if there happen to be many lower-ranking URLs that take most time to find). Also please be prepared to enable search safety settings to make Rank Tracker's searching activity look less intense to search engines.
When done, please click the Show Competitors button on the Keywords toolbar.
The rankings of competing websites will appear next to yours in the search results table.
If you want to hide competitors' data from the main table, simply click the Show Competitors button once again. If no competitors have been added to the project, the button will be grayed out.
The Rank Tracker tool lets you keep a careful track of competitors' ranking changes over time. The results of all ranking checks are saved in the project file. Please switch to the All Keywords (Detailed View) workspace to view the differences.
Editing Competitors
To change how a competing website appears in your project, please select its profile from Preferences -> Competitors and click Edit.
Using the Edit Competitor menu that opens up, you will be able to change the name, color identifier and project settings for the chosen competitor.
Please be aware that the URL itself cannot be changed (this would disassociate it from its ranking data). So if you would like to use a different URL for a competing site, you will need to create a new profile for it (Preferences -> Competitors -> Add).
Removing Competitors
To delete a competitor's URL from a project, please access the list of competitors under Preferences -> Competitors and hit the Remove button. You can use the Delete key in the same way.
Please note that all records associated with the competitor will be cleared as well. So if you feel you might need them sometime in the future, please create a back-up copy of your project file before proceeding with the deletion. Alternatively, you can keep the competitor's website in the project but unmark it from showing in your reports and exports (Preferences -> Competitors -> Edit).
Monitoring Universal Search Listings
Rank Tracker lets you monitor your website's presence in Universal Search results. A universal search results page represents a mixture of regular (or horizontal) listings with all kinds of specialized (or vertical/OneBox) search listings: images, videos, news, shopping, places, books and others.
In Rank Tracker you can choose whether to track both of the types or to concentrate on web search only.
Enabling Universal Search
You can activate the Universal Search option when creating a new project. For an existing project, please open the Preferences menu and choose the Rank Checking Mode option from it. Mark the Use Universal Search Results checkbox. Click OK to apply the changes and update your rankings in the usual way.
Considering that the number of universal search listings on a page can vary, all other search methods except for Successive Search will be grayed out.
Interpreting Universal Search Results
Whenever Universal Search is on in Rank Tracker, the tool will scan all types of listings on search results pages and report on the positions your URLs come first for each keyword. So the rankings table may contain just horizontal or vertical results or a mixture of both.
For regular web search listings the Google Rank field will show just ranks. For OneBox results the field will contain a rank and a sub-rank accompanied by the type of result (videos, images, places, shopping etc.). Ranks indicate the position of a URL on a page. Sub-ranks show the position within a specialized block of results.
View Case 1View Case 2
Comparing results of the same type
If Rank Tracker is to compare 2 regular web search results, the difference will be calculated based on their ranks.
| Example 1 | |
| Previous result: | 39 |
| New Result: | 25 |
| Rank Difference: | +14 |
| Example 2 | |
| Previous result: | 1 |
| New Result: | 4 |
| Rank Difference: | -3 |
When comparing 2 universal search results, Rank Tracker will compare the ranks first. If the ranks differ, the difference will be calculated on their basis (sub-ranks won't be taken into account).
| Example 1 | |
| Previous result: | 12(3) |
| New Result: | 7(1) |
| Rank Difference: | +5 |
| Example 2 | |
| Previous result: | 7(1) |
| New Result: | 10(2) |
| Rank Difference: | -3 |
If the rank has not changed, Rank Tracker will calculate the difference based on sub-rank changes.
| Example 1 | |
| Previous result: | 4(3) |
| New Result: | 4(1) |
| Rank Difference: | 0(+2) |
| Example 2 | |
| Previous result: | 8(2) |
| New Result: | 8(5) |
| Rank Difference: | 0(-3) |
Comparing different types of results
If a URL has moved from general web results to a universal listing (or visa versa), Rank Tracker will compare the ranks and will disregard the sub-ranks.
| Example 1 | |
| Previous result: | 12(3) |
| New Result: | 8 |
| Rank Difference: | +4 |
| Example 2 | |
| Previous result: | 25 |
| New Result: | 3(2) |
| Rank Difference: | +22 |
Configuring Rank Checking Mode
You can specify how many search results pages Rank Tracker should scan and which search method it should use. This group of settings lets you control speed your rank-checking tasks will be completed with. Also when properly adjusted, they can help prevent temporary blocks in search engines and minimize the need for search safety settings.
Best vs. Multiple Listings
By default, Rank Tracker reports on the highest positions your site has been found at. The tool will scan search listings for a keyword until it finds a page from your site.
If you choose so, Rank Tracker will continue searching for the URLs of all pages ranking for each keyword. This will give you an exhaustive picture of your site's presence in search engines. The feature is an absolute must if you aim for a double listing.
To enable Multiple Listings, please go to Preferences -> Rank Checking Mode and select the Track multiple results for keyword option.
Check your rankings as usual and take a look at your workspace. You'll find some results accompanied with arrows. Clicking on such an arrow, you'll see the list of all pages ranking for the keyword.
Number of Results to Check
By default, the maximum number of results to check is set to 100. It means that whenever you update your rankings for a keyword, Rank Tracker will check the first 100 listings (about 9-10 pages). If it doesn't find your URL on any of them, it will indicate the ranking position for the keyword as Not in top 100.
If you like, you can click Preferences -> Rank Checking Mode and modify this limit within the range from 10 to 1,000 (this is the maximum number of results search engines show). Please note that increasing the default scan depth makes a ranking update last longer. And vice versa, if you would like to check your positions in search engines faster, you can set Maximum number of results to check to 30 or 50. In many cases this is quite sufficient because most people usually look only at the first couple of search results pages. If they don't find what they've been looking for, they start a new search or refine the current one. Until your URL makes it to the top 30 (or at least top 50), people won't be likely to find it. So it doesn't really make much difference to the click-through rate whether a URL is on page 11 or page 25 (unless you are interested to document progress the website is making).
Method of Searching for Rankings
You can enable any of 3 rank checking methods that Rank Tracker supports:
- Successive Search. This option enables Rank Tracker to view results page by page just like most Internet users normally do. This is the most accurate way to check rankings. However, it's the most intense-looking one too. Each successive page a visitor opens is counted as a separate query by search engines. So if you have a lot of keywords that are not in top 50 or top 100, your API limit of daily queries can wear out pretty soon (if you have an API key on). Also opening multiple pages within a short time period can make Rank Tracker's searching activity look suspicious to the search engine. So you will need to enable search safety settings or to decrease the number of simultaneous tasks to stay block-free.
- Last Found Position. If you use this feature, Rank Tracker will start searching from the page where your URL was found during the previous check. Say, if it was on page #5 last time, Rank Tracker will skip pages 1-4 and will move on straight to page 5. This will help you reduce the need for search safety settings.
- 100 Results per Page. Using this method, Rank Tracker will view search results by 100 at a time. This will save you a good deal of time and queries. However, results search engines return to users requesting 100 results per page can be slightly different from their regular listings. That is why it is preferable to have Rank Tracker verify each result using the regular 10 results per page method.
Configuring Ranking Difference
Rank Tracker automatically saves your ranking history letting you track all ups and downs in your rankings. Please switch to the All keywords (Detailed View) workspace or customize any other workspace to show the Difference columns for your target search engines.
Keywords a page has entered top results for are marked with the Entered < status. It means that their previous status was Not in top 100 (or whatever your scan depth limit was). If they move up later, Entered < will be replaced with an actual position difference (e.g. +2). Keywords that a site hasn't entered top results for have the Stays Out x status. There isn't any data for comparison yet. The Dropped status signifies that the position of a keyword has deteriorated and now it cannot be found within the specified results limit.
By default, Rank Tracker compares current listings to the most recent ones. You can choose some other results to compare current rankings to (first, best, lowest, 1 month old and so on). To access these settings, please click Preferences -> Misc. Project Settings -> Results to Compare with. Choose a suitable option from the pull-down list.
