Reading Your Dashboard

Reading Your Rankings

Every night we look up where your site comes in Google's results, for each keyword you asked us to track. This walks down the Rankings screen from the top — what each number means, and what it cannot tell you.

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What Is on the Rankings Screen

Open Rankings from the menu down the left of your dashboard. The screen is five blocks, in this order down the page:

Six numbers across the top. The state of every tracked keyword last night, in one line.
Average Keyword Rankings. A chart of those positions over time.
Keyword Results. A table of every keyword against every night, which is where the detail is.
Google’s Average Position. The same question answered by Google’s own figures, if you have connected Search Console.
Keyword Tracking. The list of keywords itself, where you add and remove them — covered in Choosing the Keywords We Track.

The rest of this article takes the first three in turn. If you have just subscribed and the screen is empty, nothing has gone wrong: the first positions arrive the morning after you save your first keyword.

How the Numbers Are Taken

The line above the chart states the method, and it is on the screen at all times rather than behind a tooltip, because every number below it depends on all four facts:

We look at the top 100 results. Below that we report nothing rather than guessing.
We check every day, overnight.
We ask from the place you set, not from wherever our computers are — where to search from.
We ask with no search history. That is the one that surprises people: your own Google knows you and puts you higher for you than for a stranger.

The Six Numbers at the Top

Six small boxes sit across the top of the screen. All six are read from the same night, and the date above them says which night. Each one counts your tracked keywords a different way:

Average position: Add up where you came for every keyword and divide by how many there are. One number for the whole list.
Best position: Your highest-placed keyword last night — the single best result you had.
In the top 3: How many of your keywords put you in the first three results. These are the ones that actually bring visits.
In the top 10: How many put you on the first page of Google, which is roughly the first ten results.
% in the top 10: The same count as a share of all your keywords, so it stays comparable when you add or remove some.
In the top 100: How many appeared anywhere in the first 100 results. A keyword missing from this count did not come up at all.

The two averages also show how they changed against the week before. In the top 3 is usually a truer read of progress than Average position: one keyword dropping out of the top 100 can swing an average hard without anything real having happened to the rest.

The Chart: Average Keyword Rankings

The panel headed Average Keyword Rankings draws that average position over time, so you can see the direction rather than one night of it. It opens on a 7-day average rather than on single days, which is to say each point is that night and the 6 before it, averaged. Positions bounce for reasons that have nothing to do with your site — who else published that week, which of Google’s machines answered — and a chart drawn from single days shows you that bouncing as though it were news.

The raw daily numbers are one tap away when you want them. You can also narrow the window, and draw up to four individual phrases beside the average when you want to see which one is moving.

A night we could not check is shown as a gap in the line, never joined up across. If last night’s run did not finish, the screen says so above the chart and tells you the positions are from the last completed one.

Keyword Results: The Table of Every Night

Under the chart is the panel headed Keyword Results. It is a table: one row per keyword, one column per night. The keyword and how often it is searched each month stay in view on the left, and the Net change stays on the right, however far across you scroll.

Three different things can appear in a cell, and keeping them apart is the point:

A number: We checked, and that is where you came.
A dash: We checked, and you were not in the top 100. That is a real answer rather than missing data.
A dot: We did not check that night. Nothing is being claimed about that day at all.

The Net column compares the first and last night we actually checked in the window shown. Where a phrase crossed into or out of the top 100 during that window it says entered or left rather than a number — there is no honest figure for a climb that started somewhere we cannot see.

Which Page of Yours Is Ranking

A position tells you where you came. It does not tell you which page of your site got you there — and that is usually the more useful half, because the page Google picked is the page worth improving. Beside every keyword in theKeyword Results table is a small page icon. Click it and it names the page Google showed.

It also names the top results that night, above you or below, which is the fastest way to see who you are actually up against for that search.

Four things can be true when you open it, and they are kept apart on purpose:

A page: We checked, you came up, and that is the page Google showed.
A position but no page: We checked and you came up at, say, number nine — but the result Google gave us that night carried no address, so we can tell you where you came and not which page got you there. We ask again on the next check.
Not in the top 100: We checked and you were not in the results at all, so there is no page to show. That is an answer, not a gap.
Nothing yet: We have not checked that phrase yet. Nothing is being claimed about it.

Underneath, it says whether Google has been showing the same page each time. We compare the page it showed on each of the last 30 checks. Most of the time it is the same page every night, which is what you want.

When it is not, there are two very different reasons, and we tell them apart. If the page changed once and stayed changed, you almost certainly replaced it or pointed the old address at a new one — an ordinary thing to do, so we simply say what changed and leave it there.

What we do flag is Google going back and forth between two of your pages — or wandering between three — for the same search. That means Google cannot tell which of your pages is the better answer, so your own pages are competing with each other. You generally want one strong page per search.

If we have recorded a page fewer than five times, it says it cannot tell yet rather than telling you nothing is wrong. A phrase you added last week has not been looked at often enough to know, and saying otherwise would be a clean bill of health we have not earned.

Which Movements Are Worth Reacting To

Two rules are built into how movement is described, and both exist to stop you acting on noise:

A move of 3 places or fewer is called steady rather than up or down. At that size it is as likely to be the weather as anything you did.
When a phrase both starts and ends past position 30, the move is shown greyed out however big it is. Thirteen places at position sixty is thirteen places and no extra customers.

What is genuinely worth reacting to is a phrase crossing into or out of the first page, a steady direction held over several weeks, and a phrase you rank nothing at all for that you thought you had a page for.

What This Screen Cannot Tell You

The Rankings screen cannot tell you why a position moved. Google does not publish that, and anybody who says they know is guessing at it. It measures where you came and leaves the explaining to the parts of the product that can actually check something — the audit, which reads your pages, and a competitor page analysis on the Competitors screen, which reads the top results for that search beside yours.

It also cannot tell you what a position is worth. A number one for a phrase nobody searches is worth less than a number eight for one they do, which is what the search volume column beside each phrase is there to keep visible.

Common Questions

I Searched and I'm Higher Than You Say. Who Is Right?

Both are worth watching, for different questions. Your own Google remembers what you have clicked and knows where you are sitting, so it shows you your own site higher than it shows a stranger. Our number is what somebody who has never heard of you would see from the place you set — which is the number that decides whether you get the call.

Why Is There No Number for Last Night?

Either the run has not happened yet — positions are collected overnight — or it did not finish, in which case the screen says so above the chart rather than quietly showing you an older number as though it were last night's.

You Say Two of My Pages Are Competing. Which One Should I Keep?

The one that already ranks better and reads more like an answer to that search. We can tell you the two pages are competing because we can see Google switching between them; we cannot tell you which to keep, because that depends on what is on them and what you sell. The audit reads both pages and will tell you what is weak about each.

Can You Improve My Position?

We measure it and explain it; we never claim to move it, and no honest tool can promise that. What we can do is tell you what is wrong with the pages competing for that search, which is the part actually within your control.

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