How keyword checks work

Every keyword gets a fixed minute of the day, derived from its id, so a check happens at the same time each day and a day-on-day comparison compares the same moment. Checks are spread across the whole 24 hours rather than run in a burst at midnight.

Why the same minute matters

A result page for a competitive phrase is not stable through a day. Checking at 3am on Monday and 2pm on Tuesday produces a difference that is about the clock rather than about your site.

Fixing the minute per keyword removes that. It also spreads the load evenly, which is why the queue does not need to be paid for at a burst rate, which is part of why a keyword costs what it does.

What is asked for

The result page for your phrase, in your site's country, to a depth of 20.

Twenty is a deliberate stop. Beyond the second page the difference between 47th and 61st is noise you would not act on, and each extra page of depth costs real money at the provider for information nobody uses.

The tracker does not sign in and carries no history, so it is not personalised. That is why its number will not match what you see when you check yourself, and it is exactly why its number is comparable with yesterday's.

What is recorded

Your best position, and the URL that earned it. Any page on your domain counts, not just the home page. Recording the URL is how you catch two of your own pages trading places on one phrase, which is a content problem rather than a ranking problem.

Competitor positions on the same phrase, for the domains you added to the site. Three per site on Starter, up to twenty on Studio.

Search Console impressions and clicks, if you have connected it, shown beside the position.

Validation, and why a day is sometimes blank

Every result is validated before a position is stored. The number of organic results has to match the depth, a known domain for the country has to be present, and the top 20 must not have churned more than a configured share against the previous check.

A result that fails is quarantined, retried up to three times through the next provider, and never stored as a position.

This is the part worth understanding, because it produces the only visible imperfection in the product: a day with no validated check is a gap on the graph, not a zero. A blocked request, a challenge page served instead of results, or a provider timeout all end this way.

The alternative would be to store a number nobody measured. A chart with one invented point in it is worse than a chart with a gap, because you cannot see which point was invented.

Cadence

Daily on every paid plan, at depth 20. Weekly on Free.

Daily is 30 checks a month and weekly is 4.3, so cadence is close to a seven times difference in what a keyword list costs anybody in this category. If you track a large list of stable phrases, weekly is often the better purchase, and that is a quote rather than a plan.

Keywords 48 tracked, Computer, Australia Sample data

Keyword	Position	Last 30 days	Volume	Top ranking page
rank tracker australia ★ priority	3▲ 1		soon	/pricing
white label seo reports ★ priorityworking on	4▲ 7		soon	/reports
seo audit tool	7no change		soon	/audit
keyword rank checker AI, not cited	9▼ 6		soon	/docs/keyword-rank-checker/
wordpress seo plugin AI cites you	2▲ 1		soon	/plugin
search console clicks nearly there	12▲ 3		soon	/docs/search-console/
woocommerce seo plugin working on	6▼ 1		soon	/plugin/shop
seo reporting software ★ priority	1no change		soon	/reports

48 keywords, 8 shownThe line is the last 30 days. Higher is better.

Reading the table

The position plain, only the change coloured, and the last 30 days drawn in the row rather than behind a hover. Sort by movement rather than by position: a keyword that went 18 to 11 is a story, and a keyword sitting at 4 for three months is furniture.

History

Every position ever recorded is kept, on every paid plan. There is no window after which a chart starts again at the beginning.