Keyword Rank FAQs
Conductor collects a lot of rank data, along with other search data pulled from sources across the organic marketing ecosystem. Understandably, our users have questions about how we gather rank data from search engines. Here are a few FAQs related to common questions about rank data.
Keyword Rank Basics
What are keyword ranks?
Search engines order their results in order of relevance: the higher the rank (sometimes called position), the more relevant and helpful the result. The higher your content ranks, the more likely people are to click on the result—and the more traffic can be driven to your website.
What does Conductor consider a ranking keyword?
Conductor considers keywords where your content ranks in the top 100 positions of the search engine results pages to be ranking. If your content does not appear in the top 100 positions, Conductor considers that you do not rank for a keyword.
What is Standard Rank?
Standard rank refers to the rank associated with standard link results on the search engine results pages, as distinct from universal results. Standard rank does not take universal results into account (outside the few exceptions outlined below).
Exceptions to the Rule
Conductor's Standard Rank does include the following universal result types:
- Answer boxes
- News results
- Videos
Conductor began to report on these result types before Conductor released its more complete True Rank reporting. In an effort to maintain the integrity of historical Standard Rank data, Conductor continues to report on these result types when you use Standard Rank.
What is True Rank?
True Rank is the ranking assigned to universal search results. True Rank aggregates standard rank with universal results to give you a more holistic view of a user's search experience.
You can choose to report on True Rank using the Rank Type filter at the top of most Conductor reports
What is Universal Rank?
Universal rank reflects the rank of a particular result within a set of ranking universal results for a keyword. Consider the following examples:
- You might have a Carousel result appear with a True rank of 3. But each result within the Carousel has a Universal rank within it. Its first result on the left being 1, the next 2, and so on.
- You might have 3 image results in the top 100 results, with True ranks of 4, 15, and 26. Their Universal ranks would be 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
What are visibility zones?
A visibility zone is a range of rank positions. Conductor considers the top 100 rank positions as having 5 distinct zones:
- Hyper Traffic (positions 1-3)
- Traffic (positions 4-10)
- Striking Distance (positions 11-20)
- Emerging (positions 21-40)
- Developmental Zone (positions 41-100)
Visibility zones are used in Conductor for filtering reports and in charts to help you understand a site’s rankings across many keywords.
Visibility Performance Filter
The visibility zone filter in Conductor's keyword reports lets you target the most important keyword movement, helping you take action faster on the highest-priority keywords.
To show data for keywords in a specific visibility zone, select an option for each time period or select the last option to designate a specific rank range for each time period (or a combination of visibility zone and customized rank range).
There are many ways to use the date filters get important insight, including:
- Filter for keywords that fell from positions 1-10 to unranked to view possible problem areas.
- Filter for keyword that rose from unranked to positions 1-10 to see where your efforts are having a significant impact.
- Customize the keywords in multiple ways and then add them to workspaces so you can get customized alerts automatically updated each week.
How does Conductor determine my content's rank on the SERP?
Each week, Conductor crawls SERPs for the keywords you've decided to track. As it does, it takes a snapshot of rankings at the moment during the week it crawls a particular SERP. Conductor does not continually crawl SERPs and create an average rank.
For most cases, weekly check-ins for ranks are enough to gauge your content's search performance. However, for some business-critical or highly-volatile keywords, you may want to track at a more frequent cadence. You can track these keywords daily—refer to the What is Daily Keyword Tracking? FAQ to learn more.
Why can't I see monthly or yearly roll-up figures for rank or result types?
This kind of rank data—and data related to ranking result types—is tied specifically to the two dates you choose for search data reports. Conductor always compares a snapshot of the search engine results pages during the first date with a snapshot of the pages during the second date. This data can fluctuate on a daily basis (or even more frequently), so comparing on a monthly or even yearly basis is not necessarily an accurate or useful reckoning of performance.
Similarly, roll-up reporting across monthly or yearly durations would require averaging ranks and numbers of result types gained and lost. This data also does not provide a meaningful reckoning of performance.
For example, consider a result that has a rank of 80 at the beginning of a month or year and a rank of 2 and the end. A rolled-up average would say the rank is 41—which does not accurately account for the success the page in search during the year.
Likewise, consider a result from your site that became an answer box result 20 times during the course of a year and also fell out of that answer box result 20 times. Should Conductor list that as an increase of 20 answer box results, a decrease of 20 answer box results, or a net zero sum? All three options may be considered "correct", but none accurately tells the story of what happened during the year.
Because this data can change so frequently, consider instead reporting on trended rank and result type data.
Can I see rank data for whole pages or for page groups?
The Page Details report includes page-level rank data for keywords.
Why is there a discrepancy between Conductor's rank data and a live search in Google?
Conductor attempts to provide the best representation of keyword rank during its weekly collection. Discrepancies can represent differences in your location, the cookies stored by your browser, or whether your session is authenticated in a Google account. Unexpected differences can also be a result of Google's experimentation with their algorithms.
What is the difference between Rank in Conductor and the Average Position from Google Search Console?
Conductor determines rank based on crawling a SERP at a moment in time. It is not an average taken during reporting time period.
Google Search Console's Average Position value reflects the average position during the reporting time period you choose to view data for. From Google:
"In Search Console, the [position] metric is shown as average position, which averages the position value for all impressions (because the position of the link will be different each time it is seen)."
Local Rank
How does Conductor report ranks for country-level and location-level tracked keywords?
To populate its reports, Conductor uses the results it crawls on Google's results pages (or the results pages from other search engine's). When determining what results to show for a particular search experience—regardless of the locale associated with the search—Google will attempt to localize that search to be as relevant as they can determine.
What geographic area is covered by a tracked keyword's specific location in Conductor?
As stated above, Conductor uses the locations Google associates with searches. These locations are tied to the geo targets used in Google Ads.
How does Conductor determine what results to show for country-level keywords?
To collect search rank data in specific geographic locations (regardless of target type) Conductor uses the specific location that Google attributes to a given target. Often, this specific location is in a central place or important landmark within the target. For example, Google uses a central location for the country-level "United States" target and an important landmark for the city-level New York, NY target.
To determine the specific location Google assigns for a target, you can use Google Maps to find directions to the location, then right click the pin that appears to find the latitude and longitude coordinates.
Why do location-related results appear for some country-level keywords?
Similar to the circumstances described above, this has to do with the way Google "localizes" country-level searches. When a keyword in a country-level search includes "near me" or other localizing terms, Google will attempt to localize the search to be as relevant as they can determine. In the case of a US country-level search, this often means showing local results for locations in Kansas or Nebraska because they are central locations in the search's geographic region.
To avoid this, consider not tracking country-level searches with "near me" or other localizing terms.
Should I trust local- or country-level keyword ranks more? What about mobile versus desktop?
From time to time people ask which "version" of a keyword they should measure. As with so many questions that involve SEO, the answer is: "it depends". In short, what you choose to look at as your primary location or device depends on your goals—and nothing is stopping you from looking at both to get the full picture.
Country-level reporting, especially in geographically large countries, is best used as a directional metric to let you know how, overall, a keyword's rank is trending. But because searches on mobile devices are so linked to location-based intent (for example, "drug store near me"), Conductor encourages you to track keywords on smartphones in specific locations as the primary form of measurement. This is especially important if you have a brick-and-mortar or otherwise locality-based presence in specific locations.
That said, tracking keywords across different devices types does help you identify where your ranks on smartphone differ from your ranks on desktop or on tablet. You can use this information to learn where your content can bee optimized for mobile devices and to determine whether your mobile content is lagging behind your desktop to accommodate your audience and Google's mobile-first index.
As you decide how to configure your tracked keywords, remember that the same keyword tracked on two different devices counts as two unique tracked keywords for your keyword limits.