{"id":17318,"date":"2018-02-08T14:22:11","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T12:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/?p=17318"},"modified":"2018-02-09T09:32:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T07:32:23","slug":"rank-tracking-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitiveseo.com\/blog\/17318\/rank-tracking-is-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Rank Tracking is DEAD! 6 Big Keyword Tracking Myths That Need to Disappear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every digital marketer, webmaster, SEO professional, or online business owner is interested in and needs to do rank tracking. We all depend on it like we do on oxygen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet, with Google’s latest changes and algorithm updates, it’s becoming harder and harder to do keyword tracking accurately. There are even voices saying that rank tracking is obsolete and makes no sense in tracking your keywords anymore.\u00a0 But is it really so?<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Despite all the restless pessimistic thoughts and nagging questions, we believe that things have changed indeed but rank tracking is far from dead.\u00a0 Hence, we gathered 6 reasons why you might think you shouldn’t do rank tracking anymore and 6 solutions to fight the worries back and still monitor your rankings.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Is<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Take a deep breath and face the giants. Here are the 6 most important Google updates that make rank tracking look dead, but also the counter-arguments, and the tips on how to do rank tracking despite all these changes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Google Lets You See Results For Your Location Only<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Keywords Don\u2019t Matter Anymore<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Ranking On Top Positions Is Not Enough Any Longer<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. The Ranking Data Delivered By Google Is Enough<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Google Obstructs You From Knowing Exact Keyword Traffic<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. You Don\u2019t Even Know What Keyword You’re Ranking For<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
     <\/div>\n

    1.\u00a0Google Lets You See Results For Your Location Only<\/em><\/h2>\n

     <\/p>\n

    It’s been a while now since Google no longer lets you change domains to search and see results from countries others than your own<\/strong>. Yes, the incognito mode doesn’t do the work in this area anymore, nor does it when setting\u00a0the no country recognition<\/em> feature\u00a0(as in google.com\/ncr<\/em> ). And this is a problem.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \n

    Starting October 27, 2017, Google\u00a0shut off the possibility of getting results from a global point of view, in the pursuit of making search results even more local and relevant<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

     <\/p>\n

    As always, Google played their best yet (sometimes) uncomfortable card: delivering the best results possible.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Many hope things are not lost for good and run right to Settings aiming to select a country service they’re most interested in. We did it too. Yet results still come from your country IP, leaving us with the question of “what’s there to be done in order to get the\u00a0ranking data we need?”.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    This change doesn’t only affect the desktop version, but it also applies to mobile searches, as well as to Google Maps and the iOS Google app. The action of manually checking your rankings is not what it used to be anymore.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
    Now the choice of country service will no longer be indicated by domain. Instead, by default, you\u2019ll be served the country service that corresponds to your location<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    \u00a0<\/td>\nEvelyn Kao<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Search Product Manager at <\/em>Google<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Similarly to the above-mentioned update, Google launched a couple of other major updates in the past that paved the way for today’s reform in search engine results. Chronologically speaking, these two are known as the Pigeon Update and the Possum Update<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    In short, the Pigeon Update was meant to help the engine provide a more useful, on-point, and true search results to such extent that it changed the way SEO practitioners do business locally.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Launched on July 24, 2014, the Pigeon workings were meant to filter all local results, remove inorganic ballast, and deliver you the closest businesses to your location. By improving their parameters in terms of distance and location, Google was set to make the local SERPs experience a better one. Thus, we could say that Google had a thing for local results since a long time ago, slowly but surely moving towards today’s bulletproof algorithm and search environment.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Although an unconfirmed update, Possum was documented by major SEO professionals in the industry who confirmed that Google rolled out an algorithm change, one that significantly impacted local results and local listings. The massive local update happened on September 1, 2016, changing the way local search rankings worked.\u00a0<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Possum is one more evidence that Google was slowly steering to better the local search results experience, eventually getting to today’s environment where you’re bound to manually monitor rankings at a local level only.\u00a0<\/p>\n

     <\/div>\n

    Solution: Start Using Rank Checker Tools<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

     <\/p>\n

    How many of you noticed that we’ve repeatedly used the term “manually” when talking about rank monitoring? It’s because yes, all these Google updates launched over the years turned our manual rank checking upside down. Yet, there’s hope.\u00a0<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    In hard times like this, you still wish to rank on the first SERPs of every country. Maybe you have a business in Ireland, but you have the offices in the UK; therefore, it would be impossible to accurately check your ranks. To answer the needs, many rank tracking tools have emerged on the market and lend a helping hand to professionals in their fight of monitoring their activity across the Internet.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Should you check keyword ranking on a particular market, the Rank Tracking<\/strong><\/a> section available in the cognitiveSEO allows you gain deep insight into it by taking simple steps. All you need to do is to go to Add Keywords, select your desired location and search engine, decide whether you need local rank tracking and new keyword suggestions to track, and then hit the Track Keyword Now tab.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"rank-tracking-keyword\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"rank-tracking-country-selection\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    You can also do it by going to Site Explorer<\/strong><\/a>, enter your or your competitor’s website, run the Rankings section and select the desired country. That’s it, now you can see what are your top 20 keywords in that particular location, what pages target those keywords, and the position that page sits on in SERPs.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"keyword-ranking-site-explorer\"<\/a><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

     <\/div>\n

    2.\u00a0Keywords Don\u2019t Matter Anymore<\/h2>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The Google Hummingbird search algorithm is meant to bring more accuracy to Google searches and since the launch date on September 26, 2013, it systematically sought to understand the intent of the user.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Many times, one can type the word, say, “horse” in the search bar and hit enter, waiting to be fed with the information one needs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    \n

    Google will always approximate the intent behind your search, no matter how short or long the word you entered is, and therefore deliver results which, sometimes, will not cater to your needs.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    By striving to deliver more relevant results, Google is often missing the point of the query. Targeting the intent of the user and offering them results based on intent and not the exact keywords means rewriting the users’ keywords.\u00a0<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    For instance, when searching for “brown sugar”, you’d expect to find basic information about it such as definition, product specificities, how it’s made, origins, you know, the Wikipedia kind of stuff. However, you’ll get a variety of information all reading “Google is trying their best to guess what exactly you need to know about it, what exactly you’re searching for”. Results range from product information, nutritional facts, answer boxes, all-time music hits, to recipes, various uses, how-to guides, and blockbuster movies.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"keywords-dont-matter-anymore\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    The Hummingbird algorithm also overhauled both Knowledge Graph and Semantic Search, in response to the concern they didn’t really address the query, and searching still required a lot of hard work by the user. Hence, both Knowledge Graph and Semantic Search joined their forces to one, find the right things in response to a query, go deeper and broader, and deliver more information than you asked, and two, know\u00a0what results to deliver based on the context of the searched keywords. To this extent, many say that keywords are long forgotten and now context is king<\/a><\/strong>. Is it true, though? Either way, here’s a backstage view of how search is run, simplified by Matt Cutts:<\/p>\n

     <\/div>\n