Track Google rankings

Classic rank tracking is the foundation of any SEO work. You want to know: at what position does my domain show up for a keyword in Google — today, yesterday, 90 days ago? That's exactly what the Rank Tracker in Rankion does. It runs daily, stores the history and can be cross-referenced with AI visibility so you see how classic and AI search behavior connect.

Setup — project + keywords

Prerequisite: a project with a domain attached. If you don't have one yet, create one via Getting started with Rankion.

In the UI: Tools → Rank Tracker → Add keywords. You can add individual terms or paste a list. Via the API:

curl -X POST https://rankion.ai/api/v1/rank-tracker/{project_id}/keywords \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "keywords": ["vegan protein", "buy vegan protein", "plant-based protein"],
    "country": "US",
    "language": "en",
    "device": "desktop"
  }'

Response: HTTP 202 with a job_id. The first crawl runs in the background — typically 30–90 seconds per keyword batch.

Pick devices

Desktop and mobile don't rank identically — for local or transactional keywords, positions often differ by 5–10 places. Add important terms twice (once device: "desktop", once device: "mobile") if you want a complete picture. Each keyword/device combination counts as 1 tracking slot.

Trigger a manual refresh

By default an auto-refresh runs every night. If you want to see immediately after a deploy or content update whether anything moved:

curl -X POST https://rankion.ai/api/v1/rank-tracker/{project_id}/refresh \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

This is also async (HTTP 202). Depending on the number of keywords it takes 1–5 minutes. In the UI you see live progress (polling every 5 seconds).

Read the history — 30 / 90 / 365 days

The interesting information isn't today's position but the trajectory. Via the API:

curl "https://rankion.ai/api/v1/rank-tracker/keywords/{keyword_id}/history?days=90" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

You get one position per day back (or null if outside the top 100). Three time windows make sense:

• 30 days — reaction to a single content push or backlink campaign
• 90 days — quarterly trend, good for reports
• 365 days — makes seasonality visible

In the UI it's a chart with hover details. If a keyword jumps from position 18 to 7, you simultaneously check the backlink trajectory in the same period — see Analyze backlinks + disavow toxic pages.

Cross-correlation with AI visibility

This is where the real lever in Rankion lies. Classic ranking alone no longer tells the whole story — an article at position 4 in Google can simultaneously be cited in 0% of ChatGPT answers. Or vice versa.

Rankion connects both data streams: per keyword you see the Google position and the AI mention rate across GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. If a keyword performs strongly in AI search but poorly on Google (or the other way around), it shows you exactly where to sharpen up.

Setup for this: also add the same keyword to the AI visibility tracker — guide in Track AI visibility (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini). In the dashboard both are shown side by side.

Tips

• Track brand keywords too — position 1 isn't guaranteed, especially when competitors bid on your brand name.
• Prioritize long-tails — they convert better and move faster than head terms.
• On position drops > 5 places: immediately run a page deep audit (Page Deep Audit (Vision + AI Render)) on the affected URL.
• Reporting: a weekly CSV export is enough for most stakeholders.

Full module reference under Rank Tracker (Google) and AI Visibility Tracking.