We calculate your keyword ranking change scores by comparing the keyword ranking(s) on the first day of your date range to the ranking(s) on the last day of your date range.

This article covers how our keyword ranking change metrics are calculated. Ranking change metrics include:

These metrics are visible on your Rank Tracker dashboard, in reports, and on custom dashboards.

Each keyword’s ranking change score is based on the difference in its rank at the start and end of your selected date range. However, the specific ranking values used for this comparison depend on the Date Interval.

We calculate the change score by comparing the keyword’s rank at the start of the date range to its rank at the end of the date range.

The Date Interval setting (Automatic, Daily, or Monthly) affects which ranking values are used:

The resulting difference in positions is your keyword’s Change score. A positive number means the keyword moved up (improved), while a negative number means it moved down (declined).

This ensures your Change score always reflects the keyword’s movement across your selected reporting window, based on how the interval groups the data.

Let’s walk through a Daily Interval example using the keyword client seo report.

To understand this, we look at the ranking on:

That’s a drop of 2 positions, so the Google Change score = –2

Let’s look at a Monthly Interval example using the keyword utm acronym (New York).

In this case, the Date Interval is set to Monthly, so instead of using the exact start date (May 12), the system uses the first day of the start month for comparison:

That’s a movement of 10 positions upward, resulting in a Google Change of +10.

In addition to showing each keyword's individual ranking change, we show you an overall change for all keywords (or for groups of keywords if you're using tags or filters).

These overall change scores are shown in stat widgets above your keyword table.

We calculate these overall change scores by summing each keyword's individual change.

For example, imagine you're tracking four keywords which each have a Bing Change score of -2, 0, +1, and -2 for your chosen date range. Summing each of those numbers gives an overall change score of -3.

This indicates that as a whole, all four keywords dropped by a total of -3 positions on the Bing SERP across your chosen date range.

You can use line charts to plot ranking changes across time. This is possible for individual keywords, and for all keywords (or filtered groups).

Since change scores always compare rankings against the first day of your date range, you'll always see these charts starting from 0. From there, the line can move into the positive or negative.

It's important to point out that since we're using the first day of your date range to calculate each change score, the changes can be quite different depending on the start (and end) date of your date range.

For example, client seo report keyword has a Google Change score of 0 for the date range June 2nd to June 9th.

It was at ranking first on both of those dates:

However, if the date range was changed to June 2 to July 10, this keyword would have a change score of -3:

The keyword was ranked 1st at the start of June, then dropped to 3rd on July 10.

This highlights the influence that date ranges can have on your change scores. Due to this, the change scores you see for one date range do not necessarily correlate with the change scores for a different date range.

As with most of our widgets, you can see a comparison against a previous period when viewing rankings changes. These comparisons are shown as small green or red percentages on widgets.

When looking at ranking change scores, the comparison percentage is showing how the current change compares to the previous period's change. So in this case, you're seeing a percent change of two different changes.

This may seem complex, so let's look at this example widget:

The date range for this widget is January 8 to 14, and you'll see Google Change is +433 for that date range.

The comparison period is January 1 to 7, and we're reporting that +433 is an increase of 337% compared to January 1 to 7.

Setting the date range to look back at January 1 to 7, you'll see the Google Change was +99:

+433 is 337% more than +99, which is why we're showing 337% as the comparison percentage. This is calculated with the following formula:

For the above example, the equation is ((337 - 99) / 99) x 100 = 337%

Note that you can have positive and negative comparison percentages, just like you can have positive and negative change scores.