# Rank tracking

> What rank tracking measures, why the history matters more than today's number, and what a tracker should record for each check.

Source: https://netweft.com/glossary/rank-tracking
Updated: 2026-03-05

**The practice of checking, on a schedule, where a domain appears in search results for a set of keywords, and keeping the results as a history. Each check is one observation of one SERP at one moment.**

Today's position tells you almost nothing. The history tells you whether what
you did worked, which is the only question worth the money.

A useful check records four things:

- the position seen, or the fact that nothing was
- the URL that held it
- the market and device the check ran in
- the moment it ran

The URL is the one people leave out and regret. A keyword that holds position
nine while the ranking URL quietly changes from your guide to your pricing page
is a different situation from one that simply held, and only the URL column
shows it.

**Not ranking is a value.** A week in which the domain did not appear is a
category, not a zero and not a gap. Zero is a position; a gap means the check
did not run. Drawing either in place of *not ranking* makes the chart say
something that did not happen.

[netweft's rank tracking](/features/rank-tracking) runs checks on a schedule
through a background worker, or on demand, and stores each one as an immutable
snapshot — [why that matters](/blog/snapshots-not-recomputation).