The 10 Best SERP Tracking Software - Which SAAS Tool To Use [ ] (2024)

by Lewis Ogden | Last Updated: May 27, 2022|Blogging

SERP tracking software will find the keywords that your pages are ranking for, provide you with a recently updated ranking for your pages, and they will monitor the position every day, week, or any timeframe of your choosing. The best SERP tracking tools will also include details of position 0 and even your Google My Business placement.

But there’s a lot of options out there, and some offer only a little benefit over manual methods.

We have put together a list of 10 of the best pieces of software that will discover, track, and monitor your search rankings for you.

Why Use SERP Tracking Software

Tracking your search engine ranking is not only a beneficial way of monitoring your own progress. Improvements in ranking can be used to justify further investment in SEO and SEO services. It can be combined with website analytics and conversion data to determine the best marketing channels to spend money.

In business, competition is never as healthy as total domination. – Peter Lynch

However, manually checking and tracking search results is not viable. Even a relatively new website with only a handful of pages could have 100 or more keywords. Searching Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s global rankings alone could take hours.

And that’s not to mention how long it will take to search local listings, check rankings in Google Images, and see whether your website shows up in position 0 and Google’s questions. As your site expands and your reach improves, the amount of time it takes to track your rankings will increase.

And that’s where SERP tracking software comes in. Whereas a SERP checker takes the manual labor out of conducting an individual search, a SERP tracker will monitor results over time for your given keywords. Depending on the software you choose, and the subscription package you pay for, your rank checker may update every day or every week. It will inform you of gains and losses, and most tools provide a means of generating charts and reports.

The best SERP tracker is quicker, more reliable, and offers more exhaustive results than performing the task manually. But what makes the best SERP tracking software, the best?

SERP Tracking Software Benefits

Most website owners, niche site owners, and bloggers are in it to make a profit. Whether you monetize a website through affiliate links or via direct sales, you want to maximize revenue, minimize expenditure, and use your time optimally. The best SERP tracking software can help you achieve all of these goals when used properly.

Learn What Works

Whether you believe content is king, links get you top results, or the money is in the list, you need to monitor results to determine what works best for your site. Read guides, analyze competitors, and then apply your findings. But you also need to track results and monitor performance.

Your position in the search engine rankings helps determine how effective your SEO has been. Write long-form and short-form content and watch to see which ranks higher. Build links using guest posting, broken link building, and other techniques, and see which methods increase your ranking the most. Use the software to determine the effectiveness of the new SEO company you’re paying.

With the historical data and reports provided by the best SERP tracking software, you can identify what works and what doesn’t and then replicate and improve on these efforts.

Monitor Competitors

Choose position tracking software that lets you track your competitors’ websites, as well as your own. Some might do this automatically so that when you add a keyword, the software determines your main competitors for that keyword and then monitors and reports on their performance. Alternatively, ensure that your subscription enables you to monitor multiple domains. Use one domain for your own website, and then set up your main competitors as your other account domains.

Watch for competitors that are forging ahead in the rankings. Conduct in-depth competitor analysis and determine what has helped them steal a march on you. Replicate and improve their efforts, and you should be able to replicate and improve their results.

Combat Traffic Drops

You should have in-depth analytics for your website. If you do, you can set up alerts to warn you of major traffic changes, so that you will be alerted as soon as your site loses large volumes of visitors. When this happens, it is easy to let panic set in.

Before you start panicking, use your SERP software and look for any keywords that have seen a sizeable drop. If a single page lost rankings, it could be time to update the page and look at competitors that have overtaken you. If your whole site has seen a drop in rankings, it may be an algorithm update and worthy of investigation. You may have received a manual warning, or Google may have changed the search results so that they include additional SERP features that have pushed you further down the page.

Iron Out Volatile Results

Search rankings can be extremely volatile. This is especially true with new posts and new pages. Once they get indexed, Google may initially put a result on page 1 for a given search term. Later that day, your site can move off page 1, before backing again in a few days. If it’s your own site, you can just watch in amazement. If it’s a client’s site, you can prepare yourself for the awkward questions, and if it belongs to the business you work for, you can report to your manager or the board before they question it.

Generate AttractiveReports

Most SERP ranking tools provide some form of reporting. At the very least, you will be able to view results and movements on the software’s dashboard. However, the majority of tools offer some kind of reporting features. These are great for presenting to the board or clients.

Charts are easy to understand, colorful, and they can be used to attract further investment or justify current investment levels. You can even enjoy white label reporting, enabling you to remove the SERP software’s branding, and adding your own.

Choosing The Best SERP Tracking Software

There shouldn’t be a lot of difference between tracking tools. Your webpage ranks where it ranks for your chosen keywords. However, if you’ve spent more than the briefest of times looking at Google results for your site, you’ll know it isn’t as simple as that.

Results can change according to time of day and definitely according to location. They can change dependent on the type of device a person uses when searching, and the difference between the singular and plural versions of a keyword can be astronomical.

And then there’s the quality of reporting, and other software-specific factors to take into account. You should consider the following factors to ensure that you get the right tracking software for your requirements.

Ranking Update Frequency

In most cases, you really shouldn’t need to check your rankings more than once a day for a given keyword and a given domain. Daily updates allow you to monitor for any unexpected deviances so that you can react to unexpected SERP changes and algorithm updates. Weekly updates are too infrequent and could leave you unaware of drastic changes for too long.

Some of the software we’ve listed offers on-demand updates, which might be useful in a real emergency, but for the vast majority of the time, this shouldn’t prove necessary.

Search Engines

Google holds more than 85% of the global search engine market share, but that still leaves 15% and it is remiss to completely ignore the likes of Bing and Yahoo. If your site attracts visitors from countries like China then Google is irrelevant.

Good tracking software offers results from the big three search engines as well as the likes of Yandex, Baidu, and DuckDuckGo. The best will also offer local results so that you can narrow this down to geographic results, for example, google.co.uk or google.ca. And then there are those tools that monitor YouTube to find your video results, and even Amazon to find your product listings.

Consider what is important to you, how you get your traffic, and what you need to monitor.

Features To Look For

Google is no longer just a long list of textual results. They have a range of Features on their results pages. Some of these features, for example, answers to keyword questions, appear at the top of the page. Others appear on the sidebar. And Images and Videos have their own tabs, as well as being featured among the search results.

It can be difficult to keep track, but not when your SERP tracker keeps track for you.

Historical Performance Data

If the software doesn’t track historical data, it isn’t really a SERP tracker, it is a SERP checker, and these are free and found all over the Internet.

Historical tracking data lets you analyze your performance, optimize your SEO according to what’s working, and monitor results.

While some software provides you with a brief snapshot of historical data since the last time you checked, you should look for software that allows you to monitor results over the last month or year. Ideally, it will allow you to enter your own dates so that you can check results around changes you’ve made.

Competitor Comparisons

Comparing your results to your competitors allows you more than simple bragging rights. Monitoring other sites that are competing for the same keywords as you allows you to see what works, and what doesn’t work, for them. Combine this with data gathered from your own efforts, and you increase your chances of reaching the top positions for your most important keywords.

White Label Reporting

If you’re a marketing agency or offer marketing services to clients and customers, you won’t want Ahrefs or SEMRush’s name all over your ranking reports. You also shouldn’t have to take reports and then Photoshop them or transfer the data to spreadsheets so that you can create your own report with your own branding.

White-label reports enable you to remove the SERP tracker branding, add your own logo, and send the report directly to your clients. They won’t be able to bypass you, they won’t know that you get your data from a third party, and they will be happy with the quality of the reports provided.

Standalone Or Suite?

It’s unlikely that SERP ranking software is the only SEO tool you will use. Other tools that are invaluable in your optimization efforts include keyword research software, link tracking tools, and competitor analysis. Rather than buying individual subscriptions for each of these tools, you can access a single suite that does it all. But this may mean that you have to sacrifice on the quality of one or more elements of the software.

The 10 Best SERP Trackers

1. AccuRanker

• URL: Accuranker.com
• Price: $99/month – $297/month
• Best For: Large Keyword Lists

Like a lot of the SERP ranking tools on this list, AccuRanker charges according to the number of keywords tracked, starting at $99/month for 1,000 keywords. The Danish team claims that it is the fastest and most accurate tool on the market, and it supports multiple search engines while allowing you to update rankings almost on demand.

As well as working for all major search engines, AccuRanker will track your position on Baidu, Yandex, and even YouTube. It will monitor position 0 results, related questions, and other SERP features, and it will track local and global results as well as mobile and desktop search. It gives a comprehensive look at your search rankings, rather than just a cursory glance at your position for a given keyword.

AccurRankeris geared towards agencies and professionals. You can track unlimited domains. You can also run multiple reports, including share of voice, and, using a drag-and-drop editor, you can email white-label reports to your customers. And, because clients can be a demanding bunch, agencies will also benefit from viewing and reporting on ranking history as well as the capability to update rankings every other hour.

Unfortunately, AccuRanker’s agency slant is also part of its biggest drawback: its cost. As is typical with these tools, account levels are determined by the number of keywords you want to track. Even the lowliest account allows the tracking of up to 1,000 keywords, which is great if you have multiple sites or a large eCommerce site to track, but it’s too many for a niche or affiliate site, for example, and it costs $99/month.

2. MangoolsSERPWatcher

• URL: SERPEatcher.com
• Price: $29.90/month – $79.90/month
• Best For: All-In-One SEO Tools

SERPWatcher is actually one of a suite of tools from Mangools. Whatever subscription level you choose, you gain access to:

• KWFinder
• SERPChecker
• SERPWatcher
• LinkMiner
• SiteProfiler

There are some really good tools in there, but if all you need is rank tracking, it can be a little galling to have to pay for the additional tools that you won’t use. However, Mangools’ price is more than reasonable. With AccuRanker, you can track 1,000 keywords for $99. With SERPWatcher, you can track 1,500 keywords for $79.90. Also, the basic plan, which costs $29.90/month enables you to track 200 keywords, which means that it is suitable for affiliate marketers and owners of lone niche sites.

In terms of features, you get daily ranking updates. We know it’s tempting, especially in the first few months of your first site, to check results every couple of hours. But there’s really no need. Daily updates are more than enough and allow you to make reactionary edits after sudden SERP changes. You can track historical data and you can even receive email alerts to warn you of sudden SERP changes.

One of the best features of SERPWatcher is its Performance Index. This shows your website’s overall traffic levels from organic search, but also the potential traffic for your chosen keywords. This is similar to Share of Voice but specifically targeted at organic search. It shows how much better you could be doing!

3. Advanced Web Ranking

• URL: AdvancedWebRanking.com
• Price: $49/month – $499/month
• Best For: Agencies

Advanced Web Ranking isn’t for beginners or owners of single blogs. It IS for agencies and in-house teams that need to track a lot of keywords and produce multiple reports. It monitors your keywords over major search engines like Google, some of the most popular overseas search engines like DuckDuckGo, eCommerce marketplaces like Amazon, and video sharing sites like YouTube. Not only does it cover organic search results, but it tracks additional SERP features like images, news, and knowledge box results. If your site appears anywhere in the search results, AWR knows about it.

It will provide you with global, national, and local results, and it will provide daily, weekly, or monthly historical data and reports.

AWR isn’t stingy when it comes to the number of keywords it tracks, either. The Starter plan, which costs $49/month, monitors 2,000 keywords. The Enterprise plan allows the monitoring of a huge 35,500 keywords, although it does cost $499/month for the privilege.

Reporting is high up the list of features that AWR bids to offer its users. While you need an Agency plan to access local keyword search volumes, the basic plan lets you create and customize reports using a WYSIWYG editor. You can add your branding and remove that of Advanced Web Ranking, too, so it is ideal for agencies. You can also integrate third-party apps like Data Studio and automatically export CSV data.

AWR’s feature list is staggering and is clearly meant for studio and agency use, although its Start plan is more than suitable for individuals, especially thanks to the generous number of keywords it will track.

4. SE Ranking

• URL: SERanking.com
• Price: $39/month – $189/month
• Best For: Flexible Pricing Plans

SE Ranking offers three primary subscription packages, but these are variable. If you’re willing to forego daily updates and pay annually, you can knock more than half off the price you have to pay. You also get a couple of other related SEO tools. You also receive a keyword suggestion tool, backlink monitor, and on-page checker. It’s not a full complement of SEO tools, but it isn’t bad, especially considering you get the likes of the keyword tool with all subscription packages.

The ranking tracking software itself will track data on Google, Bing, and Yahoo and includes Google packs like Maps and Ads. You can also compare your results with up to 5 competitors, and every report includes a visibility score, which is a rating of how well you’re performing across your keywords.

This is another tool that offers reporting functionality that makes it suitable for agencies. This time around, you get a subdomain for each client, and with the Plus membership, or higher, you can white label the reports so that your client is unaware of your use of SE Ranking.

Happily, SE Ranking is one of the primary tools in the suite, which means that you are paying primarily for this piece of software. However, if you are only interested in the SERP tracking, it still feels like you’re paying extra for a lot of tools that you simply won’t use. No matter how reasonable the pricing, if you’re willing to pay annually and update only weekly, this is still money that could have been better spent elsewhere.

5. ProRankTracker

• URL: ProRankTracker.com
• Price: $25/month – $180/month+
• Best For: Affordable Subscriptions For Businesses

ProRankTracker offers one of the best SERP tracking tools for businesses. It doesn’t have quite the advanced tools that some of the other options offer, but it is less expensive and easier to get to grips with. ProRankTracker tracks keywords over dozens of versions of Google, Yahoo, and Bing, according to locale. It also does a very good job of tracking your video positions on YouTube and your Amazon listing positions. And it tracks results on desktop and mobile, which should be considered a standard feature in an age where Google deploys mobile-first indexing policies.

Depending on the subscription package you choose, you can enjoy on-demand updates. All packages include automatic daily updates, but if you pay for a Standard or higher package, you can run reports as often as you like. There are domain, page, and keyword limitations, but there’s also a good selection of subscription package sizes which should ensure that you don’t pay any more than you need to.

Although this tool looks better suited to the individual business, the higher subscriptions do include white label reporting. Unusually, this reporting feature includes a mobile app that you can customize to include your logo and branding, and your clients can download to view customized reports.

6. SEMRush

• URL: semrush.com
• Price: $99.95/month – $399.95/month
• Best For: The Whole SEO Package

SEMRush is ideal for marketers, whether professional or keen amateurs, that love using marketing tools. It is more than just a suite of standard tools, it offers keyword research, site audits, social media tracking, content analysis, and PPC tools. The tools are widely considered to be amongst the best on offer, which is great if you’re looking for a single account that does everything. However, you can’t pick and choose, which means that if you’re only looking for SERP tracking, you are going to pay over the odds.

If you do pay for SEMRush’s SERP tracker, though, you will be getting a very good tracking tool. But, again, there is a caveat. To get the SERP tracking features, you will have to pay a minimum of $199.95/month for the Guru package. This enables you to track up to 1,500 keywords. This also allows 10 targets per project. A target can be a specific Google location, for example, Google UK, and while 10 targets per project should be enough, you have to pay the $399.95/month Guru fee to enjoy unlimited targets.

https://twitter.com/semrush/status/1316441410703446017

The SERP Tracker complements the rest of the tools in SEMRush’s arsenal, and it works very well, but the high cost will deter you if you don’t need the additional features of keyword research tool, site audits, and more.

7. SERPStat

• URL: SERPstat.com
• Price: $69/month – $499/month
• Best For: Better Tracking Than Ahrefs

SERPStat is another all-in-one SEO suite, but where other platforms incorporate the main tools, SERPStat really does throw everything at you. As well as rank tracking, you also get access to advanced keyword research, a website analysis that goes as deep as content gap analysis, site and page audit that highlight mistakes and possible areas for improvement, and backlink analyses. You also get PPC research and extensive reporting facilities.

However, this does all come at a cost. Quite a high cost if you’re tracking more than a few keywords. You receive a given number of position checks per month starting with 15,000 checks with the $69/month Lite package. While this sounds like a lot, it is only equivalent to 500 keywords per day if you update your stats every day. And, each region counts as a separate check, so if you check five regions, that’s 100 keywords updated per day. You do get 20 times this amount with the Enterprise account. This costs $499/month, but if you replace your keyword research tool, link checker, and other SEO tools, with a single SERPStat account, it may prove decent value for money.

But, is SERPStat as good as Ahrefs and other tools for keyword research? In all honesty, not really.

What SERPStat does do really well is to put together comprehensive reports in a legible, understandable, and digestible fashion. Better than Ahrefs, in fact. The charts and data are easy to understand, although some of the reports can drown you with stats.

8. Ahrefs

• URL: ahrefs.com
• Price: $99/month – $999/month
• Best For: A Side Order Of SERP Tracking

Like Moz and SEMRush, Ahrefs is a well-established SEO software suite. It combines multiple tools and offers an array of functions, and it is used by millions of individuals, businesses, and agencies. If you’re in need of a feature-rich keyword research tool, with a small side order of SERP tracking as a secondary feature, then Ahrefs could be your best option. It isn’t cheap. In fact, it makes SERPStat look low cost, and it isn’t that simple to work out how to get the best features.

To get similar features to those offered by other sites, you first need to pay for an Ahrefs subscription. If you’re only looking for SERP tracking, opt for the cheapest package, although this still costs $99/month. For this, you can only track 500 keywords, only receive updates every 7days, and it does not include mobile updates. However, it does enable you to upgrade to RankTracker Pro, which starts at $50 per 500 keywords ranked. This also enables you to receive daily updates and mobile ranking data.

To be honest, while Ahrefs’s tools are generally considered high quality, the SERP tracker doesn’t stand out as being especially good. If you’re looking for a full suite, and have only an occasional SERP tracking requirement, Ahrefs will be good enough. If tracking is utmost in your plans, then Ahrefs will be too expensive and not feature-rich enough.

9. SERPRobot

• URL: SERPRobot.com
• Price: $0/month – $4.99/month
• Best For: Free, Manual Tracking

If you’re just starting out with a brand new site and have no budget whatsoever, or if you enjoy the challenge of manual tracking, there are free tools that will assist with part of the job. Free tools, other than Google’s search results. With free tools, you have to sacrifice a lot of features. Typically, you can search for a single keyword and a single page at a time, and you’re unlikely to be able to look at historical comparisons directly in the tool.

SERPRobot is a free tool. It doesn’t allow historical comparison and ongoing tracking, but it does allow you to check a domain name and up to 10 keywords at a time. What’s more, you can use the tool as often as you like, so as long as you’re prepared to put in the fingerwork, you can still check 500 keywords. It will just take a lot longer. Each search takes around two minutes to complete.

Whereas most of the paid tools will check at least the first 100 results, SERPRobot only checks ten results. You are also restricted to checking desktop results, which is a drawback.

However, for $60/year, equivalent to just $5/month, you can search unlimited keywords, monitor history for up to a year, and complete 300 automatic searches per day. If you can scrape together the money, it is worth the extra investment.

10. SERPMojo

• URL: SERPmojo.com
• Price: $0/month – $4.99 Pro Version
• Best For: Mobile Users

Finally, we have SERPMojo. SERPMojo is a free tool but, more than that, it’s an Android app. We’re not really sure why you would want to check keyword rankings on mobile, rather than desktop, but with more than 100,000 installations on Google Play, it’s clear that a lot of other people do get benefit from this mobile tool.

And, it’s a surprisingly good and well-featured app. It supports Google, Yahoo, and Bing results. You can choose your Google region, too, for local SEO. It provides you with a graph of historical data, and there are no restrictions on the number of sites or keywords you can track. What’s more, not only is the app free but it doesn’t display ads, either.

There is a pro version, which costs a few dollars, and this unlocks a few extra features like automatic background updates. To be honest, it’s worth the few dollars just as a means of supporting the app developers, but it isn’t necessary.

What it doesn’t do is offer both desktop and mobile results. It doesn’t provide details of SERP features, either, and you won’t get in-depth reports. But for a free tool that works on your mobile phone, it is surprisingly capable, and certainly worth a look.

Final Thoughts

SERP tracking software is only one of a host of SEO tools that you can use to track and even enhance your marketing performance. However, it is a beneficial one. If you already pay for a service like Ahrefs or SEMRush, then you already have access to some form of tracking software, although it could benefit you to upgrade your subscription.

Alternatively, there are standalone tools, as well as those that are integrated into SEO software suites. There are even free, albeit limited, tools, and even mobile phone apps.

Choose the best SERP tracker according to your budget, the number of keywords you monitor, and the frequency you want to update your ranking results. If reporting is important to you, ensure that you get the desired reporting style and features, too.

We found that AccuRanker is best for large keyword lists and for its integration with analytics and other tools. Mangools is best if you want an affordable but complete SEO tools selection, and don’t already have one. While SERPRobot is free, we found that SERPMojo’s Android app actually offers better features and is completely mobile.

Related Articles

• The Best Competitive Intelligence Tools
• 7 Competitive Intelligence Tools To Spy On Your Competition

Tags: Reviews, Software