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Read your keyword rankings: the table, keyword details and SERP features

A SERPWatcher tracking shows your keywords in a table on the left and summary charts on the right.

Written by Dev + MKT

A SERPWatcher tracking shows your keywords in a table on the left and summary charts on the right. Ranks, changes and charts cover the dates you selected in the date picker. Click a keyword to see its details: position history, the pages that rank, SERP features and search volume.

Column

What it shows

Keyword

The keyword, with a colored dot for each tag

Rank

Position on the last day of your dates

Change

Positions gained or lost during your dates

Avg.

Average position during your dates

Best

Highest position during your dates

Search

Average monthly searches, last 12 months

EV

Estimated visits per month at the current rank

The tracking page

The top of a SERPWatcher tracking names the domain, the location and the device. Select the domain to switch to another tracking. The buttons on the right are Add keywords, Share tracking, Looker Studio, Reports & Alerts and a three-dot menu.

The right column holds the Performance Index and Estimated visits charts, each with its top gainers and losers. Below them are Keyword position flow and Keyword position distribution. Performance Index, Visibility index and Estimated visits explains the scores.

A SERPWatcher tracking with the header buttons, the keyword table with Rank, Change, Avg., Best, Search and EV, and the Performance Index and Visibility card on the right.

Sort the keyword table

Hover over a column name in the SERPWatcher keyword table to see what it means, and select it to sort by it. The table starts sorted by EV, highest first. Your browser remembers the sort you choose. On a small screen, the table shows only Keyword, Rank and Change.

What the rank shows

The Rank column shows the keyword's position in Google on the last day of the dates you selected. Hover over a rank to see "Last updated" with the date of the check.

"101+" means the domain is not in the top 100. A spinner, a grey question mark or "Change timeframe to see data for this keyword!" are waiting states, not ranks. Rankings missing, stuck on 'processing' or showing 101+ explains each one.

Position change, average and best

In SERPWatcher, Change shows how many positions the keyword moved during your dates:

  • A green arrow up with a number: it moved up by that many positions.

  • A red arrow down with a number: it dropped by that many positions.

  • A grey dot: "No change."

For a keyword you added during your dates, the change counts from the day you added it, and the tooltip gives that date. Avg. is the average position during your dates, and Best the highest one.

Search volume and estimated visits

Search is the keyword's average monthly searches in Google over the last 12 months. EV is the estimated visits per month that the current rank brings, calculated from that search volume. Hover over an EV value to see how it changed.

Featured snippet icon

A quote icon next to the rank means the Google results page had a featured snippet. The tooltip says whether you rank in it, or "You are not ranking in the Featured snippet." The icon is faded when you are not in it.

SERPWatcher records the featured snippet separately from your rank. The number in Rank stays your position in the results.

Map pack icon

A map icon next to the rank means the results page had map results, which SERPWatcher calls the Map pack. The tooltip says "Your Map pack rank:" with your position, or "You are not ranking in this Map pack." The icon is faded when you are not in it.

Map pack positions need your Google Business listing on the tracking. Without one, the tooltip says "Add your GMB to track Map pack positions". Select Add your GMB to open "Change tracking details" and add it.

A red dot: several of your pages rank

A red dot after the rank, with the tooltip "Keyword with multiple URLs", means more than one page of your domain ranks for the keyword. The Ranking URLs table in the keyword's details lists each page with its own position.

The colored bar: visual position

For keywords in the top 10, a small bar next to the rank shows how high your result sits on the screen. It is green above the fold, yellow at the fold and red below it. The tooltip gives the distance in pixels from the top edge.

Keyword details

Click a keyword to open its details in place of the right column. The panel is headed "Keyword:" with the keyword, and has these sections:

  • Position history: a chart of the position during your dates.

  • Ranking URLs: your pages that rank for it.

  • Features: the featured snippet (FS) and the Map pack (MP), if they appeared. If not, it says "No features found in this period."

  • Search volume history: searches per month.

  • Tags: the keyword's tags.

At the bottom, "Last updated" says how long ago SERPWatcher checked the keyword, and "Added" how long ago you added it. Select Close to go back to the charts.

SERPWatcher keyword details for one keyword, with Position history, Ranking URLs with Preview SERP, and Features.

The position history chart

In the keyword details, Position history draws one line for each of your pages that ranked. Hover over a day to see each page's position. To hide a page's line, clear its box in the Ranking URLs table.

If a featured snippet or the Map pack appeared, a thin strip above the chart marks those days. Its tooltip says whether you ranked in them.

The ranking URLs table

Ranking URLs shows each of your pages with its Rank, URL and EV. Top is the result's distance from the top of the results page, and Cov the area it covers. With no ranking page in your dates, it says "No URLs found in this period."

Preview SERP, above the table, opens the stored Google page that SERPWatcher checked. See Why your SERPWatcher ranking differs from what you see in Google.

Open in KWFinder or SERPChecker

The keyword details end with Open in KWFinder and Open in SERPChecker. Each runs a new search for the keyword in the tracking's location, and SERPChecker also uses the tracking's device. A KWFinder search uses 1 keyword lookup and 1 SERP lookup. A SERPChecker search uses 1 SERP lookup.

Top gainers and top losers

In SERPWatcher, Top gainers and Top losers list up to 10 keywords each whose rank went up or down during your dates. One pair ranks them by Performance Index change (PI), the other by Estimated visits change (EV). Keywords whose rank did not move are left out, so a table can say "There is nothing to show". Click a keyword to open it.

Keyword position flow and distribution

Keyword position flow counts the keywords that "went up", "went down" or stayed "unchanged" during your dates. If you filter the table, it counts only the keywords shown.

Keyword position distribution shows how many keywords (#) and what share (%) sit in each range: 1st, 2nd to 3rd, 4th to 10th, 11th to 20th, 21st to 100th, and outside the top 100. Its chart shows how the ranges changed over your dates.

Add a note to a chart

  1. Click a day on the Performance Index, Estimated visits or Position history chart. The notes for that day open.

  2. Type your note, up to 160 characters.

  3. Tick Don't show in reports if the note is only for you.

  4. Select Add comment.

SERPWatcher also adds notes of its own, such as "Added 5 keywords" or a SERP volatility value. You cannot edit those.

To group, filter or export the keywords, see Organize and export keywords: tags, filters and CSV.

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