Choosing which keywords to track
Track the keywords whose movement would change what you do next, and save the rest. At the default depth a rank check is 40 credits per keyword per device, so 100 keywords checked weekly on both devices cost about 32,000 credits a month.
A Pro project can save 1,000 keywords and track 250 of them. The two numbers differ on purpose. A saved keyword is research: its volume, cost per click and difficulty are stored once and stay readable. A tracked keyword is a standing order: on every scheduled run, netweft buys the search results for it and writes down where the domain sat.
So the question is not “which keywords matter”. Most saved keywords matter a little. The question is which ones are worth paying to watch.
What a tracked keyword costs
The data vendor bills search results one page of 10 at a time, so a rank check costs 20 credits per page, per keyword, per device. A new tracker reads the top 20 results, two pages, which is 40 credits per keyword per device. It checks desktop and mobile unless you choose otherwise.
The schedule multiplies that. A tracker runs daily, weekly, monthly or only when you press the button, and weekly is the default. For 100 keywords at the default depth, in credits a month:
| 100 keywords | One device | Both devices |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | 4,000 | 8,000 |
| Weekly (about 4 runs) | 16,000 | 32,000 |
| Daily (about 30 runs) | 120,000 | 240,000 |
Pro grants 125,000 credits a month. Daily on one device spends most of that on 100 keywords alone, which is why daily is a setting for twenty keywords rather than a hundred.
Before a run, the dashboard and the MCP tool estimate_rank_check_cost both
say what it will cost: pages times keywords times devices, priced from the
rate card. Nothing is bought to produce the estimate.
The test for a tracked keyword
Ask what you would do if it moved five places. If the answer is “nothing”, it belongs in the saved list.
The keywords that pass are usually these:
- The page’s job. Each important page exists to rank for one or two terms. Track those, not every variant of them.
- Money terms. A cost per click above the site’s average is a market telling you what a visit is worth.
- Terms you are about to work on. Track them before the change ships, so there is a baseline from before. A history that starts after the fix cannot show the fix.
- A few you do not rank for yet. A keyword that reads “not ranking” every week is still data, and the week it stops reading that is worth knowing.
What usually fails the test: near-duplicates of a term already tracked, long-tail variants with a handful of searches, and brand terms you already rank first for.
Desktop, mobile, or both
Both devices doubles the cost and is worth it when the two results differ: local intent, shopping results, anything where the mobile page is laid out differently. For most informational content, one device answers the question for half the price. The setting is per tracker, so a site can watch its money terms on both and its content on one.
Depth
Depth is how far down the results a check reads before it calls a keyword unranked: 10, 20, 50 or 100. Each extra 10 results is another page, so a depth of 100 costs five times the default of 20. Read deep only for keywords you expect to find on pages three to ten; for the rest, a keyword below the depth reads as “not ranking”, never as zero and never as a gap, because zero is a position and a gap would mean the check did not run. See why the record stores snapshots.
When the list should change
Rotate the tracked list when the work moves. A keyword you stopped working on six months ago keeps its history when you stop tracking it; the snapshots are already stored and reading them costs nothing. Swap it for the term you are starting on now, and the credits follow the work rather than the past.