Ranking history: positions over time

How to read the Ranking History page — comparison of average desktop vs mobile position and charts for individual keywords (top 20 desktop and mobile) over the selected time range.

The Ranking History page shows how positions have changed over time for the entire project and for individual keywords. It’s different from Keyword Detail, which gives a snapshot of the current state: here you’re looking at the history.

Reach it from the project → Ranking History in the sidebar.

Time range selector

Top right, the chips select the range shown in all charts on the page (7 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years). The selection applies to all three cards together.

The Ranking History page with the time-range chips highlighted in the top right and, below, the Average Position — Desktop vs Mobile chart

📊 Average Position — Desktop vs Mobile

A two-line chart:

  • 🖥 Desktop (green)
  • 📱 Mobile (purple)

Inverted Y axis: #1 is at the top, so a line that rises indicates an improvement in the project’s average position. Two diverging lines signal ranking differences between devices (common: mobile is often slightly worse for pages that aren’t optimised for it).

🔍 Keyword trend (Top 20 Desktop)

Multi-line chart with the project’s top 20 keywords (based on volume or importance) for the Desktop device. Above the chart there’s an interactive legend: click a label to hide/show the corresponding keyword’s line — useful when many are overlapping. At the top of the legend the Hide all / Show all buttons clear or restore every line at once: handy for switching everything off and then turning on only the keywords you want to compare.

The Keyword trend (Top 20 Desktop) card: the highlighted Hide all and Show all buttons, the legend with one entry per keyword and the multi-line chart below

Same inverted axis logic: rising line = improvement.

📱 Keyword trend (Top 20 Mobile)

Identical to the previous, but for the Mobile device. Comparing the two cards gives you an at-a-glance view of which keywords behave differently between desktop and mobile.

When a chart is empty

  • “No historical data available” — the project was just created or the initial detections haven’t arrived yet. Wait for the next plan SERP update.
  • Only desktop populated (or vice versa) — can happen if you recently changed the project configuration or if the keyword pool is too small for the opposite device.

Operational tips

  • Use different ranges depending on the question. 7d/30d to explain the variation caused by the latest optimisation; 90d/12 months for the annual renewal pitch to the client.
  • Top 20 ≠ all. To see the history of a keyword outside the Top 20, open its Single keyword detail from the Positions page.
  • Sudden jumps in average position — usually mean: many new keywords were added (which start “not ranked” and lower the average), or keywords in decline were removed (which artificially raises the average).
  • Mobile consistently below desktop — often a Core Web Vitals or rendering issue: worth doing a mobile-first audit.

See also:

Last updated: 5 September 2026