SERP (Search Engine Results Page) features are the different elements that a search engine can display alongside or instead of standard organic results after a user searches a keyword or phrase. Examples include Featured Snippets, People Also Ask boxes, Image Packs, and Google Ads.

Tracking SERP features helps you understand the impact and depth of your SEO work. When your site is returned within a SERP feature, that can mean improved visibility and brand recognition, which in turn can boost site traffic.

SERP features are tracked as a metric within Rank Tracker. You need to turn the metric on before SERP feature icons will appear in your keyword table.

Step 1: Navigate to your Rank Tracker dashboard. Click the Settings Slider button to the right of the date selector.

Step 2: Click the Metrics tab. Find the SERP category and click it to expand the list of available SERP metrics.

Search engine metrics, such as Google Mobile Change, require the relevant search engine ranking to be enabled to generate data. If you've never turned on Google Mobile Rankings, the change metric would have no data to generate.

Step 3: Tick the checkbox next to SERP Features (for desktop Google searches) and/or Mobile SERP Features (for Google Mobile searches) to turn them on. Untick either box to turn them off.

Once enabled, SERP feature icons will appear in the SERP Features column or Mobile SERP Features column of the Rank Tracker keyword table.

For full instructions on enabling and disabling all available Rank Tracker metrics, see Enable or Disable SERP Tracking Metrics.

Each SERP feature has a corresponding icon. These icons appear in the SERP Features column any time that feature was present in the search results for that keyword.

The color of each icon tells you whether your site was returned as part of that feature:

In the example below, the SERP returned People Also Ask, Review, and Sitelink features. None of them were returned for the tracked domain, so all three icons appear grey.

We can verify this by hovering over the keyword rank, then clicking the SERP link in the bottom right of the tooltip.

In the next example, 4 SERP features were returned. The tracked domain appeared in 3 of them, so 3 icons are highlighted in the brand color, while 1 appeared grey.

Not all SERP features affect your organic ranking position in the same way. There are two categories: SERP Features that count as organic rankings, and SERP features with their own unique rankings.

The following SERP features are considered organic rankings in Rank Tracker. If your site is returned through one of these features, it will affect your Google ranking position:

If you hover over the SERP Feature Icons for a keyword, a tooltip displays a full list of the returned features. For features that count as organic rankings, no separate feature rank is shown - the position is folded into the standard Google rank column.

For example, if your site appeared as a Sitelink at position 9 in the SERP, but the keyword also ranked organically at position 3, the higher of the two (position 3) is what appears in the Google rank column.

Most SERP features do not affect organic rankings. Instead, they have their own separate ranking within that specific feature. When you hover over the SERP feature icons' tooltip, these features display their unique position number.

For example, People Also Ask is not an organic result. If your domain appeared as the 4th result within the People Also Ask section, the tooltip will show "People Also Ask: 4."

The following sections define every SERP feature tracked in AgencyAnalytics. They are grouped by whether or not they affect organic rankings.

These SERP features appear on the page but do not displace organic results. They have their own unique ranking positions within the feature itself.

For any tracked keyword, you can view a full list of every competitor that appeared in the SERP during the most recent rankings check. This gives you a side-by-side view of how your client stacks up against the competition.

Step 1: Navigate to your Rank Tracker dashboard and click on the keyword for which you want to see competition data.

Step 2: A slide-out panel opens for the selected keyword. Click the SERP tab at the top of the panel.

You will see a full table of all competitors found during the last rankings check, along with metrics to help you understand how your client is performing against each one.

Step 3: To customize which metrics are shown in the competition table, click the Settings button in the top right of the panel and tick or untick the metrics you want to display.

Important: SERP competition data is pulled from the most recent weekly rankings check. It shows a snapshot from that single check and does not show cumulative averages across a selected date range. The data here matches what you would see in the SERP verification screenshot for that keyword.

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