Read Ranking Analytics
How do I read Ranking Analytics and decide what to fix first?
Open Marketing → SEO, choose a client and a location, and the Overview answers one question: when someone near your business searches for what you sell, where do you appear on Google Maps, and where do you stop appearing? Four cards at the top name your best and worst keyword and the biggest mover each way. The keyword list and the map under them show where you rank, and Per-Keyword Rank Trend at the bottom shows how each keyword has moved month by month. The other four rows in the SEO menu then help you decide what to do about it.
Key facts
| Where it lives | Marketing → SEO, then a client and a location in the scope bar |
| The five rows | Overview, Organic rankings, Competitors, Next steps and Sydekick insight, in a menu on the left of the page |
| What the Overview measures | Your position in the local results (the map pack) from a grid of points around your business, for each keyword you track |
| The cards | Best Ranking, Worst Ranking, Biggest Gainer, Biggest Dropper. They describe the whole location, not the keyword you have selected |
| With All locations chosen | The page becomes a roll-up across locations; see compare local rankings across all locations |
| Updates | On a schedule you choose for the location (weekly, monthly, quarterly or never), plus a manual refresh. Both cost credits |
Why this matters
A single "we rank #4" hides the interesting part. A practice can be first outside its own door and invisible a mile away, and the grid shows where the line is. From there the page walks you to a decision: where you lose, who beats you there, which profile fixes are worth making and what else to track.
Steps
Open Marketing in the left navigation, then SEO.
In the scope bar at the top, choose a client, then a single location. The page title names the location, so you always know whose rankings you are reading.
On Overview, read the four cards first. Each names a keyword with a number:
- Best Ranking and Worst Ranking show a keyword with its average rank across all its grid points, for example dentist near me — Avg #11.1.
- Biggest Gainer and Biggest Dropper compare each keyword's latest month with the month measured before it, for example teeth whitening chicago — #8.2 → #11.7.
Look at Added Keywords. It opens expanded, with one row per keyword and a column for Avg. rank, Vs prev period, Top 3 coverage, Date added and History. The small squares in History are one per month, coloured by that month's rank band. Select a keyword row, or Aggregated Grid Report, to see it on the map.
With a keyword selected, the keyword list shrinks to a column and the map fills the rest. The bar above the map shows Top 3, Top 10 and Avg Rank for what you are looking at, and three switches: Show Competition, Show Map Labels and Split View. To read the map itself, see read the rank grid.
Along the bottom of the map is one chip per month of history, each with a small square showing that month's rank colour. Select a month to move the map, the figures above it and the keyword list to that month. To compare months, see see how my rankings changed.
Scroll to Per-Keyword Rank Trend. It plots each keyword's average grid rank by month. A lower number is better, so the vertical axis runs with rank 1 at the top. Choose up to 10 keywords to compare with the selector at the top right of the chart.
Move to the other rows in the SEO menu in this order, each answering the next question:
Overview
- Question it answers
- Where do I lose?
- What it holds
- The cards, the keyword list, the map and the rank trend
Competitors
- Question it answers
- Who beats me, across all my keywords?
- What it holds
- A leaderboard of businesses ranked by average rank, with a detail panel for each
Next steps
- Question it answers
- Which profile changes are worth making?
- What it holds
- Cards ranked by impact, each with a reason and the steps to do it
Sydekick insight
- Question it answers
- Why might this be happening, and what else should I track?
- What it holds
- Four analyses of your ranking data, plus keyword suggestions
Organic rankings is a separate measurement. It tracks where the location's website appears in ordinary Google results and in AI Overviews, not in the map pack, and it has its own keywords. The rest of this page is about the map-pack grid.
How the page tells you when something is missing
Several things on the page are blank for a reason, not because something broke:
- Worst Ranking stays empty until you track a second keyword. With one keyword there is a best and nothing to compare it with.
- Biggest Gainer and Biggest Dropper need a keyword with two measured months. A keyword added this month has no movement yet and is skipped. In the example above, the newest keyword appears in the list with a dash under Vs prev period and in neither mover card.
- A keyword that sits beyond rank 20 in both months is also left out of the movers, because a change inside "20 or worse" is not a real move.
- A location with no keywords shows an empty page instead of the cards.
What you'll see when it's done
- The four cards, filled in for the keywords that have enough history
- A keyword list with an average rank, a change since the previous period and a short history for each keyword
- A trend chart with a line per keyword you chose
- A clear next step: which keyword is losing ground, which row of the SEO menu to open next
Watch out for
- Updates cost credits too. The strip under the title shows the schedule, for example Automatic updates: Monthly, with a Manage schedule link. With the schedule set to Never, a keyword is saved but not measured until you refresh the location yourself.
- "20+" is an answer, not a failure. A cell the search checked and where you were not in the top 20 counts as 20+ in the averages. A grid that is all 20+ averages exactly 21. A cell the search could not measure is left out of the averages instead.
- The cards describe the location, not the open keyword. Selecting a keyword changes the map, the figures above it and the list highlight, but not the four cards.
- Rank is a measurement from points around your address. It is not the same as where you appear in a search from a customer's phone, and it is not an organic website ranking.
Questions people ask
What happened to the Not Ranking card and the Show water points checkbox?
The page no longer has a Not Ranking card. Cells where you are not in the top 20 now appear as 20+ on the map, and a keyword's band is shown in the keyword list filters. The Show water points checkbox is also gone from the page. A location's saved water setting still decides whether grid points over water count in the figures, but you cannot change it from this page.
Why is Biggest Gainer empty when I just added a keyword?
It compares a keyword's latest month with the month measured before it. A keyword needs at least two measured months before it can appear.
Why do I not see the cards at all?
The cards appear only on Overview, and only when the location has at least one keyword with a finished report.
Is this the same as my organic website ranking?
No. This page measures the map pack from points around a physical location. Organic rankings measures where the location's website appears in ordinary results and AI Overviews, using its own keywords and its own schedule.