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Glossary: Ranking History (of a Domain)
Glossary: Ranking History (of a Domain)

This feature charts a domain's organic position changes over time. Here, we describe what the terms on the page mean.

Sidra Condron avatar
Written by Sidra Condron
Updated over a week ago

SORT OPTIONS

Most Valuable Keywords (sort): This sort gives weight to keywords that earn the most clicks for the domain. It includes all of the domain's organic keywords, but high click earners are sorted toward the beginning of the list.

Newly Ranked Keywords (sort): This lists keywords that only recently started ranking in the top 100 organic spots.

Keywords that No Longer Rank (sort): These are searches where we saw this domain rank in the past, but it no longer has any authoritative content appearing in the top 100 results.

Biggest Rank Gains (sort): This sort lists keywords that had the biggest movement up from the organic position they held last month.

Biggest Rank Losses (sort): These are pages that dropped from last month’s organic position on a keyword. However, if they dropped out of the keyword’s top 100 altogether, we won’t include it in this list.

Biggest Click Gains (sort):

These are keywords that gave the domain its biggest increase in number of clicks (from the SERP) compared to what it had last month.

Biggest Click Losses (sort):

These are keywords that saw the domain lose clicks (from the SERP) compared to the number of clicks it had last month.

Keywords that just made it to the first page (sort): If a page started ranking within the top 10 organic spots (when it wasn’t last month), we include it in this sort.

Keywords that just fell off the first page (sort): Similarly, if a page had been ranking within the first 10 results last month, but it fell below that cutoff this month, we say that it "just fell off the first page."

CHART OPTIONS

Organic Clicks: This is the estimated number of clicks that the domain got from ranking on this keyword. It changes over time as the domain's position changes, and the search volume can change.

Avg Position: This is the average position the domain held on this keyword across the set date range.

HEADER

Total Keywords: During the set time span, this is the number of keywords the domain ranked for that match your current selections.

Clicks (Change): This reflects an estimated number of clicks this domain may have gotten from all of these keywords during the time span that you set.

The change metric compares click gains and losses from the end of time span against clicks earned at the start.

Sum of Search Vol: This reflects the total number of searches done in a month for all of the keywords shown

Avg Rank Change: We calculate the average rank for this domain across all keywords in the current list.

The change metric shows how much that average changed from the start of the time span to the end.

Sum of Rank Change: We look at all of the keywords in this current list and measure how much each one changed in position from the start of the time span to the end. This is the total of those changes.

FILTERS AND GRID

Keywords (include/exclude)

Include: This filter lets you narrow your results to keywords that have specific words or phrasing in them. That way you can zero in on a niche without limiting your initial search up front. If you search “pc reviews” you can include “vs” to get comparison ideas.

Exclude: This filter lets you take out results that you don’t want to consider. It’s helpful if some of them don’t match what you offer. For example, search “online tax return software,” but exclude the word “free.”

End Rank (filter only): This filters the End Rank column so you can narrow the results to keywords that ended at a certain position.

For example, you can see only keywords where the domain ranked between positions 1 and 10, no matter where it ranked at the start of the time span.

End Rank Change (filter only): You can filter your keyword results by the size of their position growth (or loss) from one end of your time span to the other. For example, see keywords that gained 10 or more spots on the SERP.

Start Rank: This is the position the domain held on this keyword's SERP at the start of the date range you provided. If the start date entry is blank, it's likely that the domain first started ranking after that start date.

End Rank (Change) (grid only): This is the position the domain held on this keyword's SERP at the end of the date range you provided.

The change metric compares the position at the end of the date range to the position that the domain held (for the same keyword) at the start of the set date range.

SEO Clicks (Change): This reflects an estimated number of clicks this domain may have gotten from this keyword's SERP during the time span that you set.

The change metric compares click gains and losses from the end of time span against clicks earned at the start.

Volume: This shows the number of searches done this past month across the US on Google.com (or searches done on Google within the selected country for our other country options). We blend data from multiple sources to give a better snapshot of search activity on this keyword, so it won’t be identical to Google’s metrics for search volume.

URL (with arrow): Expand to see details about the page that earned the domain its highest position on this keyword. Includes its average organic position and the earliest date that we saw the domain appear on this SERP.

Keyword Difficulty: We’ve calculated how difficult it would be to rank on this keyword. The score is based on a scale of 0-100 (with 100 being the most difficult to rank for).

Keyword difficulty takes into account the strength of the domains, on-page signals like “keyword in title,” and the number of .gov and .edu domains.

Cost per Click: The average amount advertisers pay Google anytime someone clicks their own ad for this keyword. The default is “broad match” costs, but exact match and phrase match are available.

EXPORT

**Differences in the Export Page**

Export pages are usually spreadsheets that cannot rely on icons and charts in the same way that our live pages can. A chart that you see on the live page might appear as a number in the export. Or, we include some notations that are used for sorting purposes on the live page. Because of that, we list any significant differences below.

Dates Ranked: This series of date codes (11/2021, 10/2021, 9/2021) represent the month when we saw this domain ranking for the specified keyword.

Ranks (Code): This data is used for calculation purposes only. It is not intended for any interpretation.

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