[FAQ] Rank tracking: daily DDC, weekly SERPs and device coverage

All SEOmonitor accounts use Dynamic Depth Crawling (DDC) on the primary device, alongside a weekly top 100 collection. On the secondary device, grandfathered accounts receive weekly top 20 collection and other accounts receive weekly top 100 collection.

Google removed the ability to retrieve the top 100 search results in a single request. Collecting the same depth now requires separate requests for individual results pages, which increases the work and cost involved in rank tracking.

SEOmonitor adapted its collection schedule to focus daily checks on where your website ranks, while keeping a weekly view of the wider competitive landscape. Dynamic Depth Crawling (DDC) follows your site on your primary device. The weekly collection provides the broader results you use to analyse competitors and compare performance across devices.

This means that your own daily rank and the full list of competing pages can have different collection dates. The sections below explain how to read those results and what coverage to expect from your plan.

You can check your subscription in Billing. SEOmonitor supports both current plans and older, grandfathered subscriptions, so some accounts have different secondary-device coverage. If you are unsure how the options shown in Billing apply to your account, contact us through the in-app chat.

On your primary device, DDC provides daily tracking focused on your website's position within the top 100 tracking allowance. Rather than collecting every competitor's position every day, it works through the results pages to find your site. The full competitive collection is refreshed weekly on Saturday.

Your secondary device is checked weekly with top 100 coverage. This gives you a view of the competing pages on both devices, while keeping the more frequent checks focused on your primary device.

Research and Keyword Vault use monthly updates covering the top 20 results on desktop. Draft campaigns, where available on your plan, cover the top 20 on the device you select when creating the campaign. These have a different purpose and collection schedule from a live tracked campaign.

The primary-device approach is the same: daily DDC focused on your website's position, alongside the full weekly competitive collection. The main difference is the secondary device, which includes weekly top 20 coverage on legacy plans.

Research, Keyword Vault and Draft campaigns use the collection depths described below. The temporary secondary-device arrangements announced during the April transition no longer describe the ongoing schedule.

Your primary device is the device with the highest search volume across the keywords tracked in your campaign. SEOmonitor selects it automatically, but you can change it in your campaign settings if another device better reflects the demand you want to focus on.

The secondary device is the other device. Either desktop or mobile can be primary, so these labels do not mean that mobile is always checked daily or desktop is always checked weekly.

To see your campaign's devices, open Rank Tracker, and see what device is selected as the default. That is your primary device.

Dynamic Depth Crawling adjusts how far SEOmonitor searches for your website on the primary device. Instead of stopping at a fixed top 20, it works through Google's results pages to find your site within the allowed depth.

For example, if your site appears on the first page, the dynamic collection can stop there. If it appears on the fifth page, DDC can continue to that page. This lets you follow your own position beyond the first two pages without treating every daily check as a fresh collection of all competitors.

The full weekly collection serves a different purpose. It gathers the wider competitive results across the top 10 pages, giving you the data used to explore competing pages and their performance.

DDC also includes checks for incomplete responses and unusually large drops. In some cases, earlier data can be used for deeper results or while a suspicious update is held. Our guide to rank-tracking safeguards explains this in more detail.

Tracking a second device helps you identify differences between desktop and mobile performance. You can see where one device performs better, whether that gap is widening or closing, and which keywords need further attention.

The weekly view supports that comparison over time. Your primary device provides the more frequent tracking for the device your campaign focuses on. When investigating a sudden change, compare the collection dates as well as the positions, since the two devices may have been checked on different days.

Go to Rank Tracker → All Keywords, open the keyword, and select Performance. In the Primary card, click the row showing the number of pages crawled. This opens the SERP Viewer.

The Today / Dynamic tab shows the pages collected for the daily result. Use the numbered page buttons to move through the collection, then select Download SERP if you want to save a copy. This tab also includes Recrawl, which lets you request a fresh check.

Recrawl is available only for today. The SERP Viewer shows today's collection and the last weekly crawl. If a recrawl returns different results, those results overwrite the current day's results.

The dated Weekly tab shows the last weekly collection from Saturday and has its own Download SERP button. Use this tab when you want to inspect the wider weekly results rather than the pages collected for today's dynamic check.

Check the date and page count on the tab you are viewing. A weekly collection targets the full allowed depth, but Google may end the results sooner. For example, a weekly tab may in some cases show contains 7 pages of captured results, which means that Google has not returned results beyond the 7th page.

Research and Keyword Vault are updated monthly with the top 20 results on desktop. Both remain unlimited and included in every plan at no additional cost. Keyword Research includes Domain Explorer, while API access depends on your plan.

New collection covers the first two results pages. A keyword that has recently entered positions 21 to 100 may therefore not appear in new Research results until it reaches the top 20. Competitor domain analysis uses the same desktop scope.

Previously saved data is still available. Domain Explorer also retains keywords which have historically been collected outside of the top 20 limit and displays those beyond the current collection depth as 20+ unless the site has reached the top 20 results on that keyword since.

Draft campaigns cover the top 20 positions on the device you select in the campaign wizard. They are included in Pro plans and above at no additional cost, and help you explore a campaign before moving it into live tracking.

For keywords ranking in the top 20, forecasting works as before. Beyond position 20, the forecast uses the available data and shows a note about the depth limitation. Forecasts for those deeper positions may therefore be less accurate than in a live tracked campaign.

The depth change does not change the Visibility metric itself. You can still use a draft campaign to plan and compare your site's Visibility with competitors. If your forecast needs fuller data for keywords beyond the top 20, use a tracked campaign, which combines primary-device DDC with the full weekly collection.

The top 100 results endpoint provides primary-device data with full competitive coverage refreshed weekly. Current-plan accounts also receive weekly top 100 data for the secondary device. Grandfathered accounts have weekly top 20 secondary-device coverage.

Other endpoints continue to include secondary-device ranks between weekly checks. The weekly rank is copied into the intervening daily slots, meaning that for that day ranks below where your site is ranking are copied from the latest week's crawl.

These terms describe page depth. Top 20 means up to the first two pages of Google's results, while top 100 means up to the first ten. Google does not always return exactly ten organic results on a page and can stop showing results before the maximum depth is reached.

The page count in the SERP Viewer shows what was actually collected. Use it alongside the collection date when interpreting or sharing a result.