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Rank tracking
Trackers, schedules and devices — how keyword slots pay for tracking, what happens when a run fails, and how a position is matched to your domain.
A tracker is a saved question: for these keywords, on this device, in this market, where does this domain rank? Running it asks that question once and stores the answer.
Creating one
A tracker needs a domain, a device and a schedule. Add keywords to it from your saved list, or paste phrases directly — pasted phrases are created as manual keywords in the project first, so everything still points at the same single keyword row.
You can have several trackers on one project. A common shape is one weekly tracker for the keywords you report on and one manual tracker for experiments.
What tracking costs
Nothing in credits. Scheduled rank tracking is paid for by your plan's keyword slots, and staying inside the pool is the whole cost.
One slot covers one keyword checked weekly on mobile. Checking daily costs 7 slots; adding desktop alongside mobile doubles it.
| Setup | Keyword slots |
|---|---|
| 50 keywords, weekly, mobile | 50 |
| 50 keywords, weekly, mobile + desktop | 100 |
| 50 keywords, daily, mobile | 350 |
| 200 keywords, daily, mobile + desktop | 2,800 |
The tracker page shows how many slots it uses and how many your plan has left. If adding keywords would take you past your pool, the tracker tells you before you commit — a bigger plan is the only way to add slots, since credits do not buy them.
Schedules
| Schedule | Plans |
|---|---|
| Manual — you click | Every plan, including Free |
| Weekly | Starter and above |
| Daily | Pro and above |
A weekly tracker costs 1 slot per keyword; a daily one costs 7, because it runs about 30 times a month instead of four.
Scheduled runs happen on our worker, not in your browser, so they keep running while you are asleep or on holiday — and they never touch your credit balance, so a tracker you set up once and forgot cannot cost you anything. On downgrade, a tracker keeps running only if the new plan still has the slots for it; otherwise it goes read-only and says so.
Devices
Mobile and desktop results differ enough that tracking only one and reporting it as "your ranking" is a bit of a fib. Track both if the number matters to a client — it doubles the slots each keyword costs — or track one if it matters to you and you would rather spend the slots on more keywords.
How a position is matched to you
A result counts as yours when its hostname is your project domain or a subdomain of it.
www. is ignored. So for example.com:
example.com/pricing— yourswww.example.com/pricing— yoursblog.example.com/post— yoursexample.com.au— not yoursmedium.com/@example— not yours
If several of your URLs rank for one keyword, the best position is recorded, along with the URL that got it.
Not found
If your domain is not in the top 20, the position is recorded as not found rather than as 21 or 0. It is a different fact, it is displayed differently, and it does not drag your average position into fiction.
When a run fails
Runs are resumable. If a run dies halfway — a deploy, a vendor outage, a network blip — restarting it processes only the keywords that have no result yet.
If some keywords fail and others succeed, the run is marked partial: you keep the results you got. If everything fails, the run is marked failed and nothing changes on your account.
History
Every run keeps its snapshots, so removing a keyword from a tracker does not delete its past. Retention depends on your plan — 30 days on Free, 12 months on Starter, forever on Pro and Agency. See billing and plans.