What is Position Tracking?
Position Tracking is a tool that monitors your website's search rankings daily for specific keywords. The tool tracks rankings across devices (mobile, tablet, desktop), locations (down to postal code), and search engines including Google, Bing, Baidu, ChatGPT Search, and Google AI Mode.
Position Tracking tracks any keyword and domain, even those not in the main Semrush database. You can track and compare multiple targets with variations in location, device, language, and search engine within a single campaign.
Measuring ranking changes helps you understand the impact of your SEO efforts.
Whether you're optimizing pages, creating content, building links, or fixing technical issues, Position Tracking shows how your work affects your rankings.
Why Should You Use Position Tracking?
Position Tracking measures how your SEO work affects rankings. You can see the impact of page optimizations, new content, link building, and technical fixes on your search positions.
Tracking performance across traditional and AI-powered search engines is essential. Mobile search and AI search platforms like ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode require dedicated monitoring to understand where your website stands.
Position Tracking helps you identify pages that need improvement and monitor competitor rankings.
You can see which pages get the most traffic from target keywords and track your weakest pages alongside competitor performance.
The tool identifies SERP features for your keywords, including AI Overviews. Daily updates and weekly email reports help you prioritize work and reach your goals. You can generate data exports and PDFs to report progress directly to clients.
What You Can Track
Position Tracking monitors rankings across traditional and AI-powered search engines. You can track performance in Google, Bing, Baidu, ChatGPT Search, and Google AI Mode.
The tool allows precise targeting by device type (mobile phone, tablet, desktop), geographic location (down to postal code level), language, and search engine. This helps you track local SEO performance and discover local competitors.
Position Tracking identifies SERP features for your keywords, including AI Overviews.
The tool provides a dedicated report that highlights opportunities to target Featured Snippets.
Position Tracking Reports and Features
Position Tracking provides reports to help you configure tracking, analyze performance, and identify opportunities.
You can even create custom reports with the My Reports tool, combining Position Tracking data with other Semrush tools, Google Analytics 4, and Google Search Console.
Additionally, Semrush Copilot analyzes Position Tracking data to provide AI-assisted notifications. After setting up your folders, you receive AI-generated suggestions to help you stay aware of visibility drops or changes.
Set Up And Configure
- Configuring Position Tracking helps you add keywords, set locations, choose devices, and add competitors to your campaign.
Analyze Performance
- Overview Report tracks visibility, estimated traffic, and average position changes over time.
- Rankings Distribution Report shows how many keywords rank in top 3, top 10, and top 100 positions.
- Pages Report identifies which pages drive the most traffic from your target keywords.
- Tags Report organizes keywords into custom categories for focused analysis.
- Devices & Locations Report compares ranking performance across devices and geographic locations.
Understand Competition
- Landscape Report benchmarks your search visibility against competitors in one view.
- Competitors Discovery Report reveals organic competitors ranking for your keywords.
Identify Opportunities
- Cannibalization Report detects pages that compete for the same keywords and hurt performance.
- Featured Snippets Report shows keywords where you can win Featured Snippet positions.
- AI Search in Position Tracking monitors your rankings in ChatGPT Search and Google AI Mode.
Access Position Tracking on Mobile
Position Tracking is available as a mobile app in the Apple Store (iOS). The Semrush app lets you follow all your Position Tracking campaigns on the go.
How Position Tracking Works
Daily and Historical Data Tracking
Position Tracking collects historical data from your campaign's creation date.
The tool tracks daily results for 60 days. After 60 days, Position Tracking displays weekly data points. These weekly snapshots are captured on Wednesdays by default and are tracked for 140 weeks.
Daily updates and weekly email reports help you prioritize work as you reach your goals.
Position Tracking makes it easy to generate data exports and PDFs to report progress directly to clients.
Historical Data for Competitors
Position Tracking shows historical data for any added competitors from when your campaign was initially created.
For example, you create a campaign on November 1, 2024, without adding initial competitors. On November 1, 2025, you add two competitors to the campaign. You will see weekly data points showing how those newly added competitors ranked for your keywords going back to November 1, 2024.
This data helps you watch trends and changes in critical keywords in your market. The greater your perspective on the market, the more ready you'll be to beat your competitors.
Exporting Position Tracking Data
Position Tracking allows you to export data in the following formats:
- Excel
- CSV
- CSV semicolon
- Google Sheets
You can export data from Position Tracking to PDF or create custom reports with the My Reports tool. Combine data from Position Tracking, other Semrush tools, Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, and other sources to create custom PDF reports. You can align reports with your brand and schedule automatic updates for seamless report automation.
The type of export, number of results exported, and the amount of daily exports you can make depends on your subscription plan.
Deleting a Position Tracking Campaign
If you have multiple Position Tracking campaigns set up using Multitargeting, you can delete any that are no longer needed through the location drop-down menu in the top navigation of your campaign.
If you’re not using Multitargeting, don’t have an SEO Toolkit subscription, or are on a Pro SEO Toolkit plan, you won’t be able to delete your Position Tracking campaign without deleting the entire folder.
Deleting the entire folder will also remove all other Website Monitoring campaigns within that folder, such as Site Audit, Backlink Audit, and On Page SEO Checker.
When you delete a folder, it isn’t permanently removed right away. It enters a “soft-deleted” state and can be restored by contacting our support team within 90 days. After that period, the folder will be permanently deleted.
However, it’s important to understand that restoring a folder only brings back the folder itself—its name and linked domain. The Website Monitoring data within it, such as Position Tracking history, will not be restored. Therefore, you should only delete a folder if you’re certain you no longer need the campaign data it contains.
Position Tracking limits by Plan
Position Tracking is part of the SEO Toolkit. Your plan determines the total number of keywords you can track across campaigns, your ability to use multitargeting, and access to specific reports including Tags, Cannibalization, and Devices & Locations.
Keyword tracking limits
Your plan determines the total number of keywords you can track across all campaigns:
- Without SEO Toolkit — 10 keywords across 1 website to monitor
- Pro SEO Toolkit — 500 keywords across 5 websites to monitor
- Guru SEO Toolkit — 1,500 keywords across 15 websites to monitor
- Business SEO Toolkit — 5,000 keywords across 40 websites to monitor
Competitor tracking limits
All SEO Toolkit levels can track up to 20 competitors per Position Tracking campaign. Your plan determines the total number of competitors you can track across all campaigns:
- Without the SEO Toolkit — Up to 20 competitors in total
- Pro SEO Toolkit — Up to 100 competitors
- Guru SEO Toolkit — Up to 3,000 competitors
- Business SEO Toolkit — Up to 4 million competitors
Multitargeting with added devices and locations
Multitargeting allows you to gather rank-tracking data for multiple targets with variations in location, device, language, and search engine within a single campaign. For example, you can track desktop versus mobile or traditional search versus AI search in one campaign.
Multitargeting availability and limits:
- Without SEO Toolkit — Not available
- Pro SEO Toolkit — Not available
- Guru SEO Toolkit — Available, 10 targets per campaign
- Business SEO Toolkit — Available, 5,000 targets per campaign
When you use multitargeting, you can add keywords to track for each target variation you create. Every keyword you add to each target counts toward your overall keyword limit, even if you're already tracking that keyword for another target.
Report access by plan
Advanced reports are available on higher-tier plans:
- Guru SEO Toolkit — Access to Tags report, Cannibalization report, and Devices & Locations report
- Business SEO Toolkit — Access to Tags report, Cannibalization report, Devices & Locations report, plus the ability to schedule CSV and Excel exports
Managing limits across your team
You can manage how units are distributed across users on your account from the User Management area of your Semrush profile.
To track more keywords than your account allows, reach out to your account executive or contact our sales team via this contact form to discuss a custom solution.