How to track Amazon keyword rankings, by hand and with a daily tracker

A keyword rank is where a listing appears when a shopper searches a term on Amazon, counted among the organic results only. Amazon shows it for this minute and keeps no record, so a rank is either counted off the results page by hand or recorded by a tracker. This guide covers what the number means, how to count it yourself, why it moves, what a daily record shows, and how to track keyword rankings with AMZ Selling Tools.

What a keyword rank is

A keyword rank is the position of one ASIN among the organic results for one keyword, in one Amazon store, seen from one shopper location. Organic means the results Amazon chose for the search itself, with every tile marked Sponsored skipped: rank 4 is the fourth organic listing a shopper meets, whatever sits around it. A lower number is a better rank.

It is not search volume: a rank says where you stand for a term, not how many shoppers type it. Nor is it keyword research: tracking starts from keywords you already know matter, from your listing, your campaigns or the terms your competitors chase.

Rank, tile and ads above

Three numbers describe one ASIN’s place on a results page. The rank counts organic results only. The tile counts every result, sponsored included. Ads above is how many sponsored tiles sat between the top of the results and the listing. In the figure the tracked ASIN is organic rank 4, the eighth tile on the page, with four ads above it. A tracker stores all three, plus three more cases:

• Your own sponsored slots. A sponsored tile the ASIN itself holds is recorded with its page and position, never as its organic rank.
• Autocorrected searches. When Amazon searches for a different spelling than you typed, it says so in a “Showing results for” line. The run is kept and counted, with the status “Autocorrected to:” and the term Amazon used, so the ranks are read as ranks for that spelling. The wording that signals a correction is confirmed on English-language result pages; on the other stores the detection relies on phrases we have not yet seen live, so treat a surprising rank there as worth a manual look.
• Not found. An ASIN that is not among the organic results on the pages scanned is recorded as not found, with the rank fields left empty. A line can scan up to 7 pages, as far as Amazon paginates, about 300 organic results in our captures; not found is still a counted check. The match is on the exact ASIN, so a sibling variation shown in place of your product reads as not found.

On its first scan, our amazon.co.uk example B0DM8M4QGB was organic rank 1 for “hot glue gun” yet only the sixth tile on the page, with five ads above it.

Indexed is not ranked

Indexed means Amazon treats a listing as a match for a term at all; ranked means it appears somewhere in the result pages for it. A listing that is not indexed for a term cannot rank for it. Amazon does not publish indexing, so the practical test is the search itself: an ASIN that is not in the pages Amazon serves is recorded as not found, whatever the cause, and the table in AMZ Selling Tools notes it as “Not in the 7 pages scanned”.

Why the same search gives different answers

Check a keyword twice and you can get two ranks. Some of that is real movement; some is how Amazon serves results:

• Location. Every Amazon store ranks its own catalogue, so the same keyword on amazon.com and amazon.co.uk is two searches. In the United States and Canada the results are read from the city you choose (the delivery dates on the cards are that city’s); whether the order itself differs between two cities is not published, so read a rank as the view from its location. AMZ Selling Tools tracks from 22 locations in 12 marketplaces.
• Time of day. Results move within a day. In our checks two readings a few hours apart can differ with no change to any listing.
• Layout. Amazon serves the same search in a grid or a list layout. In our captures a full first page holds 48 organic results in the grid and 16 in the list, and a query can flip between the two from one day to the next. Compare the rank, which counts across pages, not the page or the tile number.
• Ads. The number of sponsored tiles changes with who is advertising that day, so the same organic rank can be the sixth tile one morning and the ninth the next.

So: compare ranks across days, not tile numbers, from the same location at the same hour, and keep autocorrected runs apart from the rest.

The manual method: search as a shopper

To read a rank by hand, search the way a shopper does and count:

1. Sign out, or open a private window. A signed-in account’s own history can shape the results; a signed-out search is the neutral reading.
2. Set the delivery location. Use the “Deliver to” control at the top of the page and enter your shoppers’ postcode or city; the results and the delivery promises on the cards can both follow it.
3. Type the keyword exactly as a shopper types it, with no quotes or category filter. If the results line says “Showing results for” another spelling, you are about to count ranks for that spelling.
4. Count the organic tiles. Starting from the top, count the organic tiles and skip the sponsored ones until you reach your ASIN. Note the page and the number you reached.
5. Go on to the next pages. If the ASIN is not on page 1, keep counting through the following pages; Amazon serves no page beyond the 7th.
6. Write it down with the date, the time and the location, or the next reading has nothing to compare with.

The limits show as soon as you rely on it: one reading and no history; dozens of searches a day for a few keywords in a few stores; and a count that differs a little between layouts, locations and hours. For a handful of keywords checked now and then it is fine; for a record, the search has to run on its own.

What a daily tracker records

A keyword tracker runs the manual method once a day and stores more than the number you would write down. In AMZ Selling Tools a keyword line is one location, one keyword and up to 500 ASINs to find, yours and your competitors’. Every daily run records, for each ASIN:

• whether it was found;
• the organic rank, the page and its organic position on that page;
• the tile number counting sponsored results, and how many ads sat above it;
• any sponsored slots the ASIN itself held;
• the result card as the shopper saw it: title, price (as shown and as a number), list price, rating, review count, bought in past month, badges, coupon and discount, Prime badge, availability, two delivery dates, delivery fee and main image.

For the run: the results count Amazon reported, the pages read and the corrected term when Amazon autocorrected. Rank history is kept for the life of the account, the result cards behind each run, competitors included, for 90 days, and a deleted line is purged with its history 30 days later. There are no rank alerts yet.

How to read a 30-day rank history

A month of daily readings looks like the chart above, drawn the way the app draws it:

• Rank 1 is at the top. The axis is inverted so that climbing in the results is climbing on the chart.
• A gap is a not-found day. The line breaks and a hollow marker sits on the Not found row. Three days there and back, as the orange competitor shows, is more often a stock-out or a suppressed listing than a fall in rank.
• Read direction over three days or more. Day-to-day wobble of a few places is normal; the change that matters on the blue line starts on the day the title changed and holds for two weeks.
• Same time every day. Results move within the day, so compare readings taken at the same hour, which a scheduled check gives you.
• Pages and layout. A page holds about 48 organic results in the grid layout, so the same rank can be page 1 on a grid day and page 3 on a list day; read the rank, not the page.
• Ads above as its own series. A steady rank with a growing number of ads above it is a listing sliding down the screen without moving in the organic order.

Acting on a change

A rank history earns its keep when something changes:

• Your own edits. A new title, a price cut or a main-image swap, read against the two weeks before it instead of against memory. One day proves nothing; a direction that holds for a week does.
• A competitor launch. A new ASIN climbing a keyword while yours holds still is often visible in the ranks before it shows in your sales.
• Stock-outs. A line that drops to not found while the availability column shows the listing unavailable tells you what the outage cost in visibility.

Rank tells you whether shoppers can find a listing. To see what the click lands on, pair it with listing monitoring for title, image and content changes, BSR tracking for the sales-rank side, and competitor tracking for the price, stock and Buy Box of the listings beside yours.

How to track keyword rankings with AMZ Selling Tools

The Amazon keyword rank tracker page describes the feature field by field; this is the sequence in the app.

1. Create a line. On the Keywords page, select a location, click Add keyword, type the keyword as a shopper types it (up to 200 characters) and paste 1 to 500 ASINs or drop a file; several locations ticked means one line per location, and Pages to scan defaults to 7. Bulk add/remove takes a file with location, keyword, ASINs and action columns; Try a sample keyword fills an empty page with our amazon.co.uk example.
2. Pick the time. Each line runs once a day at a 10-minute slot: Automatic slot picks the least-loaded one, normally in the marketplace’s small hours, or Pick a time, in Marketplace time or My time; an edit applies from the next occurrence. Check now runs a line on demand, once every 60 seconds per line, Check all runs every line in view, and a manual run never replaces the scheduled one.
3. Read the table. Each ASIN on a line is a row with Rank, Change since the previous run, Found, Page, Pos and Ads above; Slot (incl. ads), Tile on page, Own ads and Previous rank sit behind Columns, and a not-found row shows a dash with the note “Not in the 7 pages scanned”. The Changes toggle keeps only the rows that moved; Group by keyword folds each line into one row.
4. Open the history. The Charts view draws a line’s rank history over 7, 30 or 90 days, rank 1 at the top with not-found gaps, plus the rank distribution of the latest run and the ASINs with the most ads above them. From a row’s menu, Rank history lists every run for that ASIN, Load older reaches further back, and View latest run shows every result card the run scanned, competitors included.
5. Export. The table exports to CSV, TSV or TXT; All history exports 7, 30 or 90 days of ranks as CSV or JSON, or the run headers. The Google Sheets script has two menu items, Import latest keyword ranks and Import keyword rank history (last 30 days). The API serves the same data for any window up to 92 days, 30 by default, with the same personal key as your listing data; that key also creates lines and starts checks, which spend credits, so keep it private.

Checking for free

Every new account starts with a free 30-day trial: 10 checks a day, shared between the listing tracker and keyword lines, each daily scan of a line counting as one check however many ASINs are on it. The 10-product limit does not count keyword lines, and no card is needed. After the trial a line scanned every day costs $0.1347 per keyword line per month ($0.00449 per check), the same as one tracked ASIN, exports, Sheets script and API included. Start your free trial.

Read next

• Amazon keyword rank tracker — the feature page, field by field.
• Amazon data in Google Sheets — the Apps Script with the two keyword imports.
• AMZ Selling Tools vs Helium 10 — where a rank tracker ends and a keyword-research suite begins.
• How to track Amazon BSR history daily — the sales-rank side of the same listings.
• How to monitor Amazon listing changes automatically — the title, image and content changes a rank move often follows.