Documentation
Rankings & rank changes
Two reports that compare your date range with the comparison period: queries and pages that appeared or vanished, and how average positions moved.
Two reports under Analytics explain movement between two periods rather than the state of one. New & Lost Rankings lists the queries and pages that had impressions in one period and none in the other. Rank Changes follows each query's average position from one period to the next and counts who moved up and who moved down. Both compare your date range with the comparison period, so they need one.
- New & Lost Rankings: what appeared and what disappeared.
- Rank Changes: how far each query moved, with a chart of all the moves.
Choosing the comparison
With Compare to set to Disabled, both reports decline to run and say that a comparison period is required. Pick the comparison to fit the question:
| Question | Range and comparison |
|---|---|
| What changed after last week's release? | Last 7 or 14 days against Previous Period, with Match weekdays |
| Did a Google update affect us? | A custom range starting on the update's first day, against Previous Period |
| Are we ahead of this time last year? | Last 28 days or Last 3 months against Year Over Year |
Short ranges are noisy: a query with a handful of impressions can appear one week and vanish the next. Prefer 28 days or more unless you are checking a specific event, and use the thresholds in Rank Changes to hide the smallest queries. The Google updates & platform events layer of the dashboard chart marks Google's updates, which helps you date a change (dashboard).
Two kinds of position
Both reports use Search Console's average position, which Google computes from the topmost position your site held each time it was shown (Google's definitions). It is an average over everyone who saw your result, across devices and countries, not the place you see in your own browser. If you track keywords in Research → Rank Tracking, Rank Changes also shows the tracker's last measured position beside Google's average.
In this section
New & Lost Rankings
Find the queries and pages that had impressions in one period but not the other, with their clicks, impressions and position, to explain traffic swings.
Rank Changes
See which queries moved up or down between two periods and by how many places, with their click impact, a distribution chart and click thresholds.