Are the Rank Tracker and Organic Keywords report in Site Explorer the same? No, they are not. They each serve different purposes and are powerful in their own right!
The Rank Tracker tool allows you to manually choose the keywords to track rankings in Google, where they should be tracked, and whether their rankings are rechecked weekly or daily.
Site Explorer's Organic Keywords report shows you all the keywords in our database we see your target website or URL ranks for. It is automatically populated and updated, and cannot be customized.
Summary of differences between the two reports
Feature | Rank Tracker | Organic Keywords (Site Explorer) |
Keywords | Must be entered in manually first, can be manually changed | Are automatically populated by checking the SERPs of keywords from our database. Cannot be manually changed. |
Historical data | Starts from when you first added the keyword to be tracked | Depends on your pricing plan |
Ranking update frequency | Every 7 days | Daily - several months (programmatically decided based on their search volume) |
Choice of location | Can be as specific as a state, city, or even zip code of a country | Only at a country level |
See Device distribution | Both desktop and mobile ranking data | Only shows desktop ranking data |
Can apply Tags | Yes | No |
Supported in Portfolios | No | Yes |
💡 Check out the Academy tutorial videos to learn about more things you can do with Rank Tracker and Organic Keywords report.
Import historical keyword data from Site Explorer
You can now import historical keyword ranking data from Site Explorer into Rank Tracker.
This allows you to see how a keyword performed before it was added to your Rank Tracker project, helping you fill gaps in historical ranking data.
How to import historical data
There are two ways to import historical data:
1. When adding keywords
When adding keywords to Rank Tracker, enable the Import history toggle below the keyword list.
This works for both new and existing projects.
2. From Rank Tracker reports
In Rank Tracker reports, select one or more keywords and apply the Import history bulk action.
How the import works
Rank Tracker imports all available historical data from Site Explorer for the period before the keyword was added to your project.
For example, if a keyword was added to Rank Tracker 1 year ago and your plan includes 2 years of historical data, you may see up to 3 years of ranking history.
From the moment the keyword is added to Rank Tracker, only Rank Tracker data is used going forward.
Limitations
When importing historical data:
Data is imported for the main location only.
For example, if your project tracks United States, New York, historical data will use United States rankings.Desktop rankings only are available because Site Explorer does not collect mobile ranking data.
Historical data may not be available for very low-volume keywords.
Import time can vary from a few seconds to several hours, depending on the number of keywords and their update frequency.
FAQ
1. Why is it that I see one keyword showing rankings in the Rank Tracker, but not Organic Keywords report?
As shown above, keywords in Rank Tracker need to be added first before tracking starts happening. Check to see if your keyword is added into Rank Tracker first.
2. Why do the rankings of the same keyword for the same location not match in Rank Tracker and Organic Keywords report?
Rank Tracker and Site Explorer fetch SERPs independently, and do not share data. Even in the case that both Rank Tracker and Site Explorer rechecks rankings on the same day, the SERP can already be different:
Both tools could have randomly picked a different part of the same location to check rankings. This can especially affect rankings for keywords that have very localized results (e.g. "restaurant near me")
Both tools could have checked at different times of the day, and due to SERP volatility in Google, can already show different results.