Everything in your dashboard, explained — screens, metrics, and settings.
Getting started
RankChecker tracks where your website ranks on Google for the searches you care about — every day, on both desktop and mobile — and shows whether Google’s AI answers are mentioning you. Two quick steps get you running:
1. Set your domain
Open Settings and enter the website you want to track (for example example.com — no https:// or www needed). Until a domain is set, every keyword reads “Not in top 20,” because RankChecker doesn’t yet know which site to look for.
2. Add a few keywords
From the dashboard choose Manage Keywords, then add the searches you want to follow and the location each should be checked in. Results arrive on the next daily run, or immediately if you press Check Now.
Dashboard
The dashboard is your at-a-glance view. From top to bottom:
Status line — when your rankings were last checked, and a live countdown to the next daily check.
Domain banner — confirms which site is being tracked, or warns you to set one.
Usage line — your plan and how many of your keyword slots are in use, with a progress bar.
Summary tiles — five headline numbers:
| Tile | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Keywords Tracked | How many active keywords you’re following. |
| Average Position | See Average Position. |
| In Top 10 | See In Top 10. |
| AI Overviews Present | See Present vs Cited. |
| Cited in AI Overview | See Present vs Cited. |
Below the tiles sit your keyword table, the AI Visibility panel, and an actions bar with Check Now and Manage Keywords.
The keyword table
Each row is one tracked keyword. Click a row to open its detail page. Rows are ordered by best position first, un-ranked keywords next, and paused keywords at the bottom.
| Column | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Keyword | The search term, its location, and the device shown (the dashboard shows desktop). |
| Volume | Roughly how many times that term is searched per month. Shown compactly (e.g. 1.3K, 2M). |
| Position | Your current rank — see Position. |
| Change | Movement since the previous check — see Change. |
| 30-Day | A small sparkline of your recent position trend. |
| AI Overview | Whether Google’s AI answer appeared and whether it cited you — see Present vs Cited. |
| Ranking URL | The page of yours that’s ranking for this term. |
Position & ranking
Position is where your page sits in Google’s organic results — the regular blue links — counted 1, 2, 3 and so on. RankChecker checks the top 20 results (the first two pages). If your site isn’t in that range, you’ll see “Not in top 20.”
Why organic position, not “absolute” position? Google now stacks AI Overviews, “People also ask,” videos and more above the blue links. RankChecker reports your rank among the organic results — what you’d naturally call “I’m #3” — rather than counting those extra blocks, so the number matches what site owners actually mean.
Both desktop and mobile are checked every day; they can rank differently, which is why both are tracked.
Change & the 30-day trend
The Change column compares your latest position to the one before it:
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ▲ (green) | Improved — you moved up by that many spots. |
| ▼ (red) | Dropped — you moved down by that many spots. |
| – 0 | No change since last check. |
| – | Not enough data to compare yet (e.g. a brand-new keyword, or one check so far). |
The 30-Day sparkline plots up to your last 30 desktop checks. Because a lower number is a better rank, the line rises as you climb — up is good.
Average Position
The average of your current desktop positions across every keyword that is ranking in the top 20. Keywords with no ranking are left out of the average (they’d otherwise have no number to include). It’s a single pulse-check on overall standing — watch the trend more than the absolute value.
In Top 10
How many of your keywords currently rank on Google’s first page (desktop position 10 or better). Page-one placement is where the large majority of clicks happen, so this is often the number that matters most for traffic.
AI Overview: Present vs Cited
This is the distinction people most often mix up, so it’s worth getting right. They are two separate things, and one depends on the other.
Present — does the AI answer exist?
Present means Google displayed an AI Overview (its AI-written answer box at the top of the results) for that search. It’s about the search, not about you — an overview can be present whether or not your site is involved at all.
Cited — are you a source in it?
Cited means that within the AI Overview, Google named your domain as one of the sources it drew from. The overview lists a handful of source links; “cited” means one of them is yours.
The key relationship: Cited is a subset of Present. You can’t be cited in an answer that doesn’t exist. So every keyword falls into one of these states:
| State | On a keyword row | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Not present | — | No AI Overview appeared. Nothing to be cited in. |
| Present, not cited | Present | Google wrote an AI answer, but used other sites as sources — not yours. Most new sites sit here. |
| Present & cited | ✦ Cited | The AI answer exists and names your site as a source. This is the win. |
How the two dashboard tiles use this
AI Overviews Present is the percentage of your keywords where the box shows up — it measures opportunity (how much of your space has AI answers). Cited in AI Overview is the percentage where you’re actually a named source — it measures capture. The gap between them is your opening: overviews that are appearing without you in them, yet.
New sites commonly show some “Present” but 0% “Cited.” That’s expected, not a bug — being cited generally follows from ranking well and earning authority for that topic.
AI Visibility (ChatGPT & Google AI Overview)
The Beta AI Visibility panel answers a broader question than the per-keyword AI Overview column: across AI tools generally, how often is your domain being named? It’s refreshed weekly (the underlying data is slow-moving) and reports two platforms:
| Metric | Meaning |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT Mentions | How often your domain is named or cited in ChatGPT’s answers, across the AI mention index. |
| Google AI Overview Mentions | How often your domain is named across Google AI Overviews in that same index. |
How this differs from the AI Overview column
It’s easy to confuse the two, so here’s the line between them:
| AI Overview column (per keyword) | AI Visibility panel (domain-level) | |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Each tracked keyword, individually | Your whole domain, in aggregate |
| Source | Google’s live search results, for your exact keywords | A broad index of AI answers across many queries |
| Platforms | Google AI Overview | Google AI Overview and ChatGPT |
| Refresh | Daily | Weekly |
Top domains AI cites in your space
When data is available, this list shows the domains AI tools most often cite for topics in your area — effectively, who’s winning the AI-answer real estate you’re competing for. For a brand-new site this may be empty at first; as the index fills in for your space, it becomes a practical shortlist of who to study and where you could be cited instead.
If you’ve just set up tracking, both mention numbers will likely read 0. New or lower-authority sites usually start there — as your rankings and citations grow, AI tools begin to name you.
Keyword detail page
Clicking any keyword opens its detail page, which holds:
Tracked location — change where this keyword is checked (country, state, or city/town). Changing it resets that keyword’s history so the new location’s trend starts clean.
| Tile | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Current (Desktop) | Latest desktop position. |
| Current (Mobile) | Latest mobile position. |
| Best Ever | The best (lowest-numbered) position ever recorded for this keyword. |
| AI Overview | Absent, Present, or Cited · #position — the latter showing where in the source list you appear. |
Position Over Time — a chart of your desktop and mobile rank across every check. The axis is flipped so #1 sits at the top; gaps mean “not in top 20” on that day.
AI Overview Citations — when an overview is present, this lists the exact sources Google named, in order. If your site is among them, it’s flagged You.
Managing keywords
Reached via Manage Keywords on the dashboard.
Adding a keyword
Enter the search term and pick a location (type to search countries, regions, and cities). Defaults to the United States if none is chosen. You can’t add the same keyword + location twice.
Pausing vs deleting
| Action | Effect |
|---|---|
| Pause | Stops daily checks for that keyword but keeps its history. Resume any time. Paused keywords sort to the bottom and don’t count toward your active total. |
| Delete | Removes the keyword and its entire history. This can’t be undone. |
Desktop / mobile view
On the Keywords screen you can switch which device’s positions the table displays. Both are always tracked regardless of which you’re viewing.
Daily checks & Check Now
Automatic daily check — once a day, RankChecker refreshes every active keyword on both desktop and mobile. The time it runs is governed by the time zone in your Settings, and the dashboard shows a countdown to the next one.
Check Now — pulls fresh rankings on demand instead of waiting. A few things to know:
- Results appear within a few minutes (the check runs, then results are retrieved).
- There’s a brief cooldown between manual checks to prevent accidental double-clicks.
- Each plan includes a set number of manual checks per month; the remaining count is shown next to the button. They reset on the 1st.
- Your automatic daily checks are never affected by the manual limit — they keep running even if you’ve used all your manual checks.
Settings
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tracked Domain | The website RankChecker looks for in the results. Enter it without https:// or www (e.g. example.com). This must be set or all keywords read “Not in top 20.” |
| Time Zone | Determines when your daily check runs, so “daily” lines up with your own day. |
Plans & billing
The Billing page shows your current plan, how many keyword slots you’re using, and (on a paid plan) your renewal date. Paid subscribers get a Manage billing link to update their card, switch plans, view invoices, or cancel.
Plans
| Plan | Monthly | Annual | Keywords |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29/mo | $290/yr | 100 |
| Pro | $79/mo | $790/yr | 300 |
| Business | $199/mo | $1,990/yr | 1,000 |
Annual plans include two months free. Checkout and subscription management are handled securely by Lemon Squeezy. Your keyword limit is always shown in the usage bar on the dashboard.
Free tools (no account needed)
Alongside the dashboard, RankChecker offers free public tools anyone can use without signing in. Each one is a single live snapshot of the same data the app tracks for you every day.
AI Overview Checker
Enter a keyword and a location, and the AI Overview Checker runs a live Google search, tells you whether an AI Overview appears, lists every source it cites, and (if you add your domain) flags whether you’re one of them. It’s the quickest way to see your AI Overview standing for a single search.
Snapshot vs tracking: the free tool is a one-time check of a single keyword. Inside the app, Present and Cited are measured across all your keywords every day, with history and change over time. The free tool is a taste; the dashboard is the ongoing picture.
More free tools (Rank Checker and Keyword Ideas) are on the way. You’ll find them all under Free SEO tools.
FAQ
All my keywords say “Not in top 20.” Is something broken?
Usually it means your domain isn’t set in Settings, or your site genuinely isn’t in the first two pages yet for those terms. Check the domain first.
My “Cited in AI Overview” is 0%. Why?
If your site doesn’t yet rank well for a term, AI Overviews typically won’t name it as a source. As rankings and authority grow, citations tend to follow. Zero is normal early on — see Present vs Cited.
What’s the difference between the AI Overview column and the AI Visibility panel?
The column is per-keyword, daily, Google-only; the panel is whole-domain, weekly, and covers both ChatGPT and Google AI Overview. Full comparison under AI Visibility.
Why did my keyword’s history disappear after I changed its location?
Rankings are location-specific, so a new location starts a clean trend on purpose — mixing the two would make the chart misleading.
Does Check Now use up my daily checks?
No. Manual and automatic checks are separate. Manual checks have a monthly allowance that resets on the 1st; the daily automatic run is always included.
Do I need an account to use the AI Overview Checker?
No. The free tools are public and need no login. They give a one-time snapshot; the app does the same checks across all your keywords daily, with history.