

Updated · Feb 02, 2023
Updated: January 30,2023
SERP monitoring is an ever-evolving discipline. Only monitoring the top organic desktop rank positions for Google queries won’t fly in 2022.
To help boost your search engine visibility, we listed the best SERP tracking solutions for your consideration.
In this piece, you’ll learn about:
Let’s begin!
Diverse ranking data
Expansive feature set
Flexible pricing
SE Ranking can pull the latest Google, Yahoo, Bing, and YouTube SERP data. Using well-thought-out add-ons, you can easily extend the limits of its basic functionality.
SE Ranking can return many search engine, device, region, and/or language data combinations per SERP keyword check.
Using this solution, you can analyze the traffic volume of top-performing keywords. It can help you focus on the search terms for the sites you manage.
To make your websites as SEO-friendly as possible, you can leverage its website auditor and backlink monitoring system.
To evaluate how popular your clients’ sites are, you can perform Alexa Rank checks with SE Ranking. With its Search Engine Autocomplete feature, you can discover quality search suggestions.
Moreover, SE Ranking can follow your clients’ top competitor sites to tell you their best and worst practices.
This SEO rank tracking software can generate insightful competitive and keyword research reports. They illustrate how the organic keyword rankings and paid ad campaigns of your clients’ rivals appear on Google’s interface.
If you subscribe to the Pro or Business plan, you can access historical keyword, domain, and organic SERP data.
From your SE Ranking account, you can view your social media analytics data and automatically post Twitter and Facebook content.
Some of SE Ranking’s advanced features include the following:
SE Ranking has no free version, but its Essential edition is available for trial use. This 14-day free trial is limited to 250 keywords and includes white labeling.
You can arrange a live demo of this keyword rank monitoring product too.
Here are the highlights of SE Ranking’s three plans:
A trio of factors determines the pricing of this SERP rank checker: subscription length, ranking check frequency, and keyword limit.
So, how much would each subscription set you back? Check out these price ranges by update frequency:
The App Store does display different prices for SE Ranking Pro. But having a subscription already includes free access to this mobile app.
Apart from getting up to 60% savings, any of the above annual subscriptions include free migration. That means convenience when switching from another keyword rank tracking software provider to another.
To make the most out of this rank checker, you can purchase its add-ons, including:
If you need to track more than 20,000 search queries, you’ll have to sign up for a custom plan instead.
Regardless of the package, you can pay your subscription with your credit card, PayPal, or a bank transfer. If SE Ranking performs as intended, you won’t be entitled to a refund upon cancellation.
Few SERP trackers can match the depth of SE Ranking’s ever-evolving functionality. Its nonrefundable subscriptions can be a cause for concern. But its free trial should suffice to help you make an informed decision.
Free version
Live-reporting mobile app
On-demand updates
PRT is the only freemium product on this list. It tracks almost anything from organic search results to Google videos. Its payment support is just as flexible as its pricing.
With PRT, research and analyze exact Google and Bing keyword search volumes locally and globally. Plus, this SERP keyword checker gets estimated figures for YouTube and Amazon.
This software has no restriction on the number of URLs you can monitor per keyword. It also helps you discover the top 100 results for any search term you track.
Not only that, its state-of-the-art algorithm captures rankings in any location and language with high accuracy.
PRT’s local rank monitoring is powerful. It’s able to obtain a wealth of data from 187 Google, 35 Yahoo, 32 Bing sites. Also, it gains insights into the search results in any regional versions of YouTube and Amazon.
What’s more, this software is optimized to track business listings on Google Snack Pack and Local Finder.
If you’re on the go, download this web-based PRT app’s iOS, iPadOS, and Android versions. You can remotely access your ranking data, which gets refreshed every day. If needed, you may force updates ahead of schedule.
To stay on top of significant developments, PRT’s email notifications alert you regarding ranking changes.
This SERP keyword tracker has solid reporting prowess, too.
It lets you create branded reports in English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, or Dutch. Like clockwork, you can even set them to arrive in your clients’ inboxes daily, weekly, and monthly.
Using PRT’s MyRanks app for iOS and Android and permission-based sub-accounts, you can share live reports with your clients.
For SEO agencies, PRT delivers dedicated support, permits access to its API, and provides Google Drive, Dropbox, and WordPress integrations.
PRT has a SERP tracking edition for free. For the first 30 days, you’ll be able to track up to 30 terms and access some premium features. Afterward, it’ll revert to its original limit of 20 keywords and its basic ranking monitoring capability.
The free version has no expiration. But to experience PRT in its full glory, upgrade to any of its three paid plans: Starter, Pro, or Agency.
All PRT plans are available in monthly and annual subscriptions. Each price goes up only when you need to increase your keyword ranking tracking capacity.
To exceed the keyword rank tracking limit, contact PRT’s help desk to craft a custom plan.
To place your order, you can use a Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, JCB, or UnionPay card. PRT also accepts Amazon Pay, PayPal, and many other local methods. They also take payments in 20 different currencies.
Generally, PRT subscriptions are nonrefundable.
PRT’s reach is one of the widest we’ve seen. But its affordability can be questionable due to its relatively one-dimensional set of features.
Great search engine diversity
SERP feature monitoring
One-hour updates
Some of AWR’s claims to fame are extensive search-engine support, all-inclusive SERP featuring monitoring, and flexible data updates. Every aspect of its pricing model inspires confidence.
AWR can supplement your keyword research by recommending popular terms related to the sites that you handle.
This search engine rank tracker can provide you with fresh global, country-specific, and location-specific keyword search volume stats on Google. It’s a reliable source of quarterly search trends too.
As a capable SERPs tracker, it can show the top 100 web pages for any given search query. It also measures your clients’ market share and reveals more competitors you may not be aware of.
Moreover, AWR supports a whopping 4,000+ search engines. So, it can fetch ranking data from both major and obscure platforms.
This software allows you to hyper-target the top-ranking sites you wish to monitor. You can get results on desktop and mobile, specify the search type, and exclude unwanted SERP features like Sponsored Links. It covers Google My Business listings too.
Besides English sites, AWE captures the positions of web pages in Spanish, Italian, German, and French.
With this SERP position checker, you can choose from multiple automatic data update frequency options. You’re required to refresh your figures manually, but it won’t be instantaneous. AWR promises a turnaround time of one hour instead.
Collaboration-wise, AWR uses WYSIWYG reporting. They let you add as many users as you want and designate them as team members or customers.
Be sure to put your brand front and center with its whitelisting feature.
AWR charges by the amount of resources you require to get the ranking data you need. That’s why its plans are based on keyword units, not keywords. One keyword unit is equivalent to 5 pages of SERPs from 3 different search engines updated weekly.
If you want, you can go beyond the parameters of individual keyword units. Try picking a different update frequency, reduce the number of SERP sources, or increase the search depth.
Therefore, you could economize your credits by adhering to the default preferences of this search engine position software. But the trade-off is that you wouldn’t be able to track very many terms.
For example, switching from weekly to daily updates could reduce your trackable keywords by 85.7%.
Here are the keyword-unit limits, notable features, and prices of AWR’s plans:
AWR isn’t a free SERP checker. Although you can book a demo or take this web-based software for a spin for 30 days.
If their standard keyword-unit caps aren’t good enough, customize a more fitting package.
When you decide to buy a subscription, pay with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, PayPal, or Eurocard. The company accepts mailed checks and bank transfers too. Plus, it has a 30-day refund policy.
While AWR can’t rival full-blown SEO software suites, it’s undoubtedly one of the most useful SERP checkers money can buy.
Wide global reach
SERP feature monitoring
Free search engine simulator
Nightwatch emphasizes local SERP checking and has a site-auditor and Google simulator to boot. Its resume looks solid as a rock, but it's not without its downsides.
Nightwatch is an accurate SEO rank tracking app. It can monitor desktop and mobile rankings in 107,296 locations on Google, Google Places, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. When appropriately configured, it displays the positions of your tracked keywords in different SERP features.
Through custom keyword segmentation, Nightwatch can project your terms’ performance in powerful visuals. Its custom segments underscore the search queries that drive organic traffic to your clients’ sites and uncover the web pages with poor content.
What’s more, this SERP tracker audits the sites that you manage. This way, it’s easy to spot areas of improvement like missing metadata and broken links. You can prioritize your high-impact URLs and analyze past audits to assess progress.
Do unbiased test queries from any location on Google and in any language using its search engine simulator. This is a major time-saver since it eliminates the need to mask your IP address.
As a SERP data reporting tool, Nightwatch is customizable and lends itself to whitelisting. Using it, you can impress your clients with configured graphs and overviews of key stats like city-level rankings.
Thanks to its capless user seating, Nightwatch makes it easy to collaborate with all SEO campaign stakeholders.
Nightwatch has three premium plans. They let you test-drive any of them for 14 days, but you must provide payment information first.
If this doesn't sit well with you, schedule a risk-free product demo instead.
To proceed, you may use any Visa, Mastercard, American Express, or UnionPay credit card. This SEO rank tracking software provider will automatically bill you only if you don’t cancel before the trial period ends.
Here’s what you get from every Nightwatch plan.
If none of these plans fit your needs, go with the custom Enterprise package instead. Whichever route you take, you can’t ask for a refund.
Nightwatch is a remarkable local ranking data aggregator with a thrifty attitude towards keyword rank tracking. Its custom plan is a welcome option, but be mindful of the price increase. From such a low base, scaling your keyword capacity significantly could inflate your bill.
SERP feature monitoring
"Not Provided" keyword recovery
On-demand updates
AccuRanker does everything you could hope for in a SERP tracker. Since it doesn’t use a tiered pricing model, you stand to get its full functionality regardless of your subscription.
AccuRanker can track all SERP elements that matter. Plus, you can use it to study trends with historical keyword search volumes and search result pages.
This rank checker has no domain cap. This means you can use it to manage an unlimited number of projects at no extra cost. Plus, this SERP position checker can help you spy on each of your clients’ top 10 competitors.
If that’s not enough, its Share of Voice feature reveals how much of the market your clients control.
Because of its device and location data monitoring capabilities, AccuRanker lends itself to managing mobile and local SEO campaigns.
Aside from Google, it can also keep tabs on the SERPs of Bing, Yandex, Baidu, and Youtube.
AccuRanker is capable of daily and on-demand updates too. In other words, its webpage rankings from supported search engines stay fresh every 24 hours. However, you’re responsible for your updates.
For ease of SERP rank data analysis, glean insights from your keywords and landing pages through segmentation.
Plus, this software has native connectors for Google Analytics, Search Console, Data Studio, and Sheets, as well as Adobe Analytics. Among others, these integrations can help you discover “Not Provided” keywords. AccuRanker’s REST API is on tap too.
For maximum collaboration, create as many sub-accounts as you need.
To constantly be on the same page with your clients, use AccuRanker’s advanced reporting capabilities.
It’s also possible to customize templates and send reports automatically any day of the month. You can also incorporate your company logo into them to reinforce your brand.
AccuRanker renders migration a breeze. With its built-in importer, conveniently move your historical SEO data from external sources onto it.
This search rank tracking software vendor has one plan and has no add-ons. The number of keywords you need to track dictates how much you have to pay. You can’t pick a specific number. So, you’ll have to make do with the company’s keyword limits.
If you need to monitor 50,000+ keywords, you can ask for a individualised quote. To test it first, sign up for its SERP data tracking free trial for 14 days.
When you’re ready to make a purchase, use any of the following payment options:
AccuRanker subscriptions are fully refundable within 14 days.
As a SERP tracker, AccuRanker is hands-down one of the industry's best. But without any frills, it’s not a good substitute for SEO tools designed for other tasks.
City-level local ranking data
SERP feature monitoring
Flexible updates
SerpWatch is a reliable desktop, mobile, and local ranking data collector that goes the extra mile to simplify analysis. But be careful; it has a deceiving price list with a surprising add-on.
SerpWatch can track keywords on Google, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube over time. It captures the desktop and mobile rankings of unlimited sites in a myriad of locations. So, if you’re targeting results in specific countries, states, or cities, this rank checker provides you with relevant data.
Furthermore, SerpWatch finds whether your clients are more visible than their top 10 competitors.
To help gauge whether strategies work, it shows historical webpage rankings over SERP features in real-time.
Using SerpWatch’s 10-day snapshots of organic Google SERPs, you can monitor the recent progress of your campaigns. This search engine position software also sends alerts when your clients overtake their competitors and vice versa.
With this SERP tracker, critical keyword metrics like organic traffic–based estimated revenue are readily available for consumption. This way, you gain a deep understanding of the returns your targeted terms generate.
Use this cloud app for quality keyword research to consistently create content that occupies the top of SERPs. With tags and filters, you’re able to segment and sort all of the terms on your watch with ease.
SerpWatch is big on graphs, which is a plus when collaborating with your team members and reporting to your clients. You can overlay various metrics on similar graphics, making it painless to analyze stats. To have the most up-to-date data, schedule ranking checks every 1, 2, 4, 6, and 12 hours.
Be sure to leverage SerpWatch’s white-labeled reports and emails to reinforce your brand while keeping your clients in the loop.
To move data between apps, this keyword rank tracking software simplifies migration and third-party integration. You can also link your program through API to fetch the ranking data your team needs.
SerpWatch has a 15-day free trial with no payment info required. To get a premium license for this search engine rank tracker, here are your options:
However, Client Portal is an add-on that costs $19/month.
To track terms beyond the above SERPs rank check quotas, tailor its Enterprise plan to your needs, and get a quote.
SerpWatch accepts Visa, Mastercard, Discover, or American Express for payment.
Your purchase will come with a 15-day money-back guarantee. So, you can get a refund if this software isn’t up to your standards.
SerpWatch’s pay-per-check pricing model can exhaust your credits fast if you have a penchant for frequent data updates. Most of its imperfections aren’t unique only to it. But its decision to turn a usually free data sharing feature into an add-on can be hard to overlook.
Unique metrics
Interactive reports
Complementary SEO tools
On its own, its feature set won’t blow your mind. However, being part of Mangools is what makes SERPWatcher special. To be fair, its proprietary metrics are refreshing and can change quantifying SEO success.
In a nutshell, this search engine position tracker displays desktop and mobile SERPs from over 50,000 locations. It also tracks Google My Business listings and shows how visible they are in relation to other local businesses.
This rank checker’s latest ranking data is updated daily. In terms of progress analysis, it keeps the past positions of monitored URLs available.
With no domain cap to think about, it’s up to you how you spend your subscription’s daily keyword limit.
SERPWatcher's rank-tracking repertoire is limited to Google. However, this SEO keyword rank tracker makes up in metrics what it lacks in search engine diversity.
Estimated visits, keyword position flow and distribution, are some of the key metrics it calculates. Perhaps the most important of them all are the Performance and Dominance indexes.
The Performance Index measures how a webpage moves up or down Google’s SERPs. The Dominance Index represents one’s total possible organic traffic share based on weighted factors like keyword search volumes.
With event-based alerts, learn about rank changes ASAP and react to them accordingly.
If you hate messy data as much as the next SEO pro, you’ll love its keyword tagging feature. To make it possible for you to view all critical data on one screen, SERPWatcher uses a two-column interface.
Apart from automated email report sending, this SEO keyword ranking tool supports interactive browser-based report sharing too. Through white labeling, give the impression that you have a proprietary report builder from your clients’ perspective.
If multiple users need access to your SERPWatcher data, they may be able to simultaneously connect on 3–10 devices.
SERPWatcher is the rank monitoring tool of Mangools, a comprehensive SEO solution.
This SERP tracker is available for a 10-day free trial with a 10-keyword restriction, but you can’t buy it separately. Therefore, the following tools are also included:
Here are Mangools’ SEO rank tracking plans:
To get this premium rank tracking software license, pay by any major credit card. You may also send funds via bank transfer and Cryptocurrency payment is another option.
As a Mangools subscriber, you’re entitled to a 48-hour money-back guarantee. It doesn’t apply to two consecutive subscriptions, though.
Aside from a 40% discount, an annual subscription may help you receive a partial refund when you make a request.
Many of the perceived downsides to SERPWatch aren’t as bad as they seem. It isn’t meant to be a game-changer. So, you may find it particularly useful if you’re trying to increase the rankings of simple sites.
Key-phrase monitoring
Decent global reach
Decent competitor tracking
SERPWoo is equipped with functionalities helpful for managing SEO campaigns and protecting your online reputation. Its tiered pricing model is more lenient than others too.
This rank tracking tool dedicates itself to tracking Google’s top 100 results for any given keyword. It crawls the world’s leading search engine daily and can return mobile SERP positions as well. It’s also able to grab localized results down to the postal code level.
With its Keyword Finder, it lets you look up the terms your client’s most successful competitors are targeting and study their strategies.
In addition, you can learn about the winning aspects of Google’s top-ranked domains using ZORA, SERPWoo’s native on-page SEO tool. Its input helps you unravel the secret to SERP dominance in the present SEO landscape.
This rank checker is optimized for online brand reputation management too. Through Tagging, you can classify URLs as positive, negative, or neutral for sentiment. Or, you can come up with something else that better suits your situation.
Likewise, SERPWoo is the best SERP checker with mention monitoring capability. It scans online conversations on Google, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit. Plus, it updates its data around every 4–8 hours. Such information enables you to join the discussion immediately and dictate the narrative.
SERPWoo takes data visualization to the next level. Its eye-catching graphs are an explosion of colors and pack tons of stats. To focus on the metrics you care about, capitalize on its custom filters.
As far as collaboration and reporting go, this software permits the creation of multiple sub-accounts. SERPWoo’s white-listing functionality applies not only to reports but also to client dashboards and emails.
This Google SERP checker lets you customize your clients’ color palettes with its report builder. Through set-and-forget scheduling, send out reports daily, weekly, monthly, or on a specific day of the month with its autopilot.
SERPWoo uses tiered pricing, so you may have to upgrade to a higher plan to access advanced features.
They have four premium packages. Their defining characteristics are as follows:
None of them have a free trial. Although you should check out its on-demand demo and see this Google SERP checker in action.
SERPWoo offers monthly and annual billing options. If you choose to pay a year in advance, one month’s worth of service will be on the house.
In terms of payment, you can use your Visa, Mastercard, Discover, JCB, Diners Club, or American Express card.
SERPWoo’s subscription fee is refundable within the first three days only. The company may not return 100% of your money if you use a considerable amount of resources before cancellation.
SERPWoo can serve as your eye and ears on SERPs across dozens of locations. But its limited scalability can be an issue as your business scales.
Expansive feature set
Great search engine diversity
In-depth competitor research
Whether or not we take Rank Ranger into account, Rank Tracker is miles ahead of pure SERP checkers. However, this rank tracking tool isn’t without pitfalls.
Rank Tracker derives organic desktop and mobile ranking data from a staggering number of search engines. It supports 400+ search engines in no less than 100 jurisdictions.
This SERP checker fetches the top 100 organic results on Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, and Yandex, plus more. It’s also helpful in monitoring YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play Store rank positions.
For local SEO, Rank Tracker is engineered to follow the Google Local Pack and the top 50 Google Maps listings. It empowers you to geolocate searches by region or by city anywhere on the planet and to analyze competitor performance.
The downside is that this keyword tracking tool may restrict you from using more than two search engines per campaign. Unless you sign up with either Rank Ranger’s top-tier or custom plan, you may face campaign-count constraints too.
Rank Tracker goes beyond the organic blue links. It scours opportunities in different SERP elements like the Featured Snippet. This way, you can help your clients appear above the fold across multiple screen sizes and leapfrog other dominant web pages.
With Site Explorer, learn about the best practices of top-ranked URLs and spot content overlaps and gaps.
Also, discover more relevant terms for your content creation through the use of its Keyword Explorer.
For deep SERP analysis, you can tailor your white-labeled reports how you see fit. Emphasize metrics, compare historical rank positions by period, and design eye-grabbing graphs.
Through Rank Ranger’s client dashboards, you get your findings in front of the right public with ease. To produce backups regularly, set the system to send reports in PDF automatically.
Rank Tracker is just one of the many components of Rank Ranger. The other tools include Keyword Finder, Link Manager, and Insight Graph. Together, they form a robust SEO and SEM software solution.
You can’t purchase this keyword tracking tool individually. This fact may limit your budget flexibility. But judging by the contents of each of Rank Ranger’s four packages, the subscription price is worth it.
Here’s what you get from them:
Test-drive this SERP analysis tool for 14 days. To upgrade to the monthly Lite or Standard subscription, you can do it online.
If you’re interested in either the Pro or the Premium plan, you’ll have to contact Rank Ranger’s sales team. The same thing goes if you want to build a custom plan.
To pay for your subscription, you can use PayPal or a major credit card.
If you prefer annual billing to monthly, you can arrange it with the company’s help desk. Paying a year in advance unlocks the option to do bank transfers with invoices.
Whichever plan or billing option you go with, you won’t be entitled to any refunds.
Undoubtedly, overseeing web pages for position on SERPs with Rank Ranger can be a costly proposition. But considering how it can replace multiple individual SEO tools, it may be worth the price.
No keyword cap
"Not Provided" keyword recovery
Handy competitor stalking
AuthorityLabs does the basics well and then some. Its pricing structure makes it possible to scale up without watching your bill considerably increase.
AuthorityLabs is a Yahoo, Bing, and Google SERP tracker that can grab desktop and mobile results. Its technology is sophisticated enough to pull SERPs in over 250 locations, show results in different languages, and update daily.
For local rank tracking, you can set AuthorityLabs to observe business listings on Google My Business, Yelp, and the like. This SERP tracker can reach all international locales. But you can geotarget zip codes in the US if desired.
As far as competitive site monitoring is concerned, AuthorityLabs helps you unmask your clients’ main ranking rivals.
Pull this off by activating this software’s group and sync functionality. This feature lets you monitor branded, purchase-intent, and high-converting keywords, among others, both that of your clients and their competitors.
The competitive intelligence you gain from AuthorityLabs can enlighten you about SERP volatility and search engine algorithm updates too.
This SEO rank tracking app exhibits multiple types of results for your targeted terms. So, it can seamlessly find new avenues to reach the summit of SERPs. Racking up featured snippet wins is an excellent case in point.
What separates AuthorityLabs from most is its ability to recover “Not Provided” keywords. Its Now Provided reports yield up the missing pieces of the puzzle illustrating a site's main organic traffic drivers.
Furthermore, this SERP checker keeps your clients from suffering from cannibalization. By monitoring their site rankings alongside syndicated content publishers, you can think of better content strategies.
Lastly, AuthorityLabs supports whitelisting, has no user count restriction, and requires no login for report sharing.
This software is a keyword position tracker through and through. But it has free separate downloadable SEO tools for backlink checking, keyword grouping, site crawling, and more.
AuthorityLabs has no free edition. But you can arrange a product walkthrough to see how it works first. They’ll let you choose any of its four paid plans for a 14-day free trial.
Let’s see how these packages differ from one another.
To keep this SEO keyword rank tracker after the trial period, all you need is a valid payment card. AuthorityLabs is under the Traject umbrella, which has a no-refund policy.
Despite being a part of the more capable Traject suite, AuthorityLabs is a worthwhile individual subscription in its own right.
A workable SERP tracker is the key ingredient for every successful SEO campaign.
However, many solutions on the market aren’t worthwhile. Keeping close tabs on Google SERP placements is essential for campaign management. But this capability alone isn’t enough to satisfy the ever-growing needs of SEO professionals and agencies.
To help you find a SERP tracker that suits you, the factors you should consider are as follows:
Choose a keyword position tracker that can cover the number of terms you need to watch without going over budget.
Keyword monitoring is the bread and butter of rank tracker software providers. That’s why they usually charge by the number of search queries they keep an eye on.
Naturally, these vendors impose keyword tracking caps. But you can increase your limit the higher the plan you subscribe to.
Determine which search engines a rank checker supports.
For most SEO agencies, finding out the positions of a client’s web pages on Google is all that matters. Some think that appearing above the fold in the SERPs of other search engines is important as well.
If you believe that ranking high on Bing and Yahoo, etc., can make a big difference, pick a multi-dimensional solution.
Know which languages a rank tracker understands.
All of the best SERP tracking solutions are optimized to monitor the SERP positions of web pages with English content. This standard capability wouldn’t mean that much if your clients need to track non-English results, though.
Arguably, English is still the language of the Web. But only a quarter of all internet users speak and understand it proficiently. Vast numbers of people online are Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, or Portuguese native speakers.
Many businesses with customers worldwide recognize this, which is why they create site content versions in other languages.
If you have such clients, it’s crucial that you can monitor the SERP placements of their non-English web pages.
Read up on whether a SERP tracker covers local listings.
If you do local SEO, it’s a must to use a website rank checker to monitor geotargeted keywords. Unfortunately, not all solutions track keyword ranking data at the state and city levels.
Make sure your prospective rank checker can track mobile SERP placements.
If mobile search is your SEO campaigns’ primary focus, as it should be, using a desktop-only solution is a crime.
In the US, 50% of site traffic comes from smartphones and tablets. This figure is bound to keep rising. In fact, more than half of all of the internet globally is already mobile.
Although most people still prefer to spend more time on desktop-optimized sites, there’s no denying mobile SEO. So, adopting SERP tracking software to track mobile search rankings is what a forward-looking agency would do.
Go with a tracker that can detect rank changes immediately.
Working with inaccurate page ranking data can be costly on many levels. It wastes resources, lulls you into a false sense of security, and ruins a brand’s reputation.
In general, the SERP tracker vendors that are confident in the accuracy of their reports like to brag about it. Those that are strangely quiet about data integrity probably know that they can’t rank movements precisely yet.
Find out how often a SERP rank tracker carries out ranking data updates.
Webpage search results can age like milk. That’s why it’s imperative to use a rank checker tracker that can take daily snapshots of SERPs. To react to rank changes fast, you need real-time notifications.
Select a SERP rank checker that puts a premium on keyword data organization.
Handling countless keywords for multiple clients in a disorganized manner will result in SEO campaign mismanagement. That’s why your webpage rank monitoring tool should provide you with adequate tools to arrange mountains of data points neatly.
Classifying keywords, grouping them into small clusters, and categorizing client sites are some capabilities to look for.
Think about ease of access and collaboration.
Some SERP checking vendors let you create sub-accounts, which are extra seats for multiple users to view reports. This capability can impress your clients who love the option to easily check their ranking data themselves remotely.
As the admin, create log-in credentials for your collaborators. Plus, set permissions to define what the others can do while retaining control over the account.
Gauge how fast the search engine rank tracking software is.
Quick loading time is a desirable feature of not just websites but also rank-checking tools. Ideally, you should be able to navigate different pages instantaneously. Having to wait when accessing a fresh set of data will certainly bog down your processes.
Assess the level of functionality you need.
Some rank checkers are more potent than others. However, a more sophisticated tool isn’t necessarily better than a simpler one.
Sometimes, less is more, especially when you have to pay extra to get all the bells and whistles. If advanced features don’t add value, choose the software’s no-frills edition when it translates into savings.
Study a search rank tracking software provider’s subscriptions and add-ons.
Keyword count is the basis of most rank checkers’ plans and prices. But in tiered pricing models, you get more functionalities as you upgrade.
A good rule of thumb is to stick with a basic package to avoid inflating your bill. You may be able to move up to a higher plan anytime anyway. So, hold off on an upgrade if you can get all the essentials without paying more.
On top of that, check for free editions, free trials, and money-back guarantees.
Ahrefs and Semrush didn’t make our list because of practicality.
There’s no questioning their effectiveness as SERP trackers. But they lack the healthy balance between functionality and reasonable pricing that we’re looking for.
Ahrefs forces you to upgrade to Rank Tracker Pro to receive daily updates and go over its keyword cap. The price of this add-on starts at $50. Plus, you can only scale up to 100,000 terms with it.
If you need to track results for more than 100,000 search queries, Ahrefs has no custom plan in place.
Additionally, it doesn’t support white-labeling. So, you can’t even put your company logo on the reports you send to your clients.
This famous SERP analysis tool can be an expensive subscription for collaboration. The maximum user count included is five in its top-tier plan. You’ll also have to pay $30 for every additional seat you need.
Although Ahrefs has a 48-hour money-back guarantee, it has no free trial at the moment.
So, you only have two days from the date of your purchase to change your mind. If you go beyond this short window, you’ll lose as much as $9,990 worth of your payment.
Half of our featured products don’t grant refunds. But they have either a free edition or a lengthy free trial to offset the risk.
In contrast to Ahrefs, our top picks’ plans are well-rounded enough to deliver essential SERP checking functionalities without any add-ons. Rarely do they sell must-have keyword rank monitoring capabilities separately.
Semrush, on the other hand, is less financially risky compared to Ahrefs. Its bottom- and mid-tier plans have a free trial for seven days with no payment info requirement. Its subscriptions are also refundable within the same amount of days.
The problem is that Semrush doesn’t consider its local SEO–related features as standard offerings. To monitor SERP results locally and manage business listings, you’ll have to pay an extra $20–$40 per month.
Semrush monetizes increased user seating too. Every additional sub-account will set you back $80.
Likewise, impressing your clients with white-labeled reports eats up another $100 of your monthly budget.
Semrush has a maximum cap on trackable terms at a mere 5,000. It already costs $449.95 a month to monitor this many keywords using this SERP keyword checker.
Conversely, many of our top picks have the bandwidth to track as many or more search queries for less.
Comparing SERP checkers is surprisingly tricky. Many of them look the same on paper, so figuring out which one is worth your time, energy, and money can be painful.
Hopefully, we’re able to shed some light on the nuances of these worthwhile rank monitoring solutions.
We stand behind our top picks. But admittedly, they’re only credible as long as they pull accurate ranking data. So, we encourage you to exercise due diligence to get what you pay for.
SERP monitoring is the process of tracking web pages and apps that organically rank for keywords. It’s important because being visible on search engines and getting traffic begins with deep rankings awareness.
It’s as simple as entering the keywords in your SERP tracker you want to monitor. The tool can reveal which URLs rule the traditional organic rankings. It may also display which sources have won the right to display content on other SERP elements.
No rank checker is the best at everything. But in our book, the best SERP tracking solutions for specific users are the following:
Romj Amon
Romj is a veteran copywriter who used to be a Jack of all trades. Now, he's trying to be a master of one: technology. He jumps down the rabbit hole to size the latest innovations up. As a content contributor for TechJury, he hopes to help you keep up in our fast-paced world with his discoveries.
Latest from Author
Your email address will not be published.
Updated · Feb 02, 2023
Updated · Feb 02, 2023