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.
SEOmonitor uses checks within Dynamic Depth Crawling (DDC) to reduce the risk that an incomplete Google response or an unusually large rank drop becomes a misleading update. These checks can retry a page or hold a suspicious update while reporting earlier data to avoid false negatives/positives.
What counts as a suspicious rank drop?
SEOmonitor compares the new result with the keyword’s previous rank on the same device. A drop is treated as suspicious when at least one of the following conditions applies.
Previous position | Drop that triggers the check | Example |
1 to 5 | A drop of 10 or more positions | 4 → 14 |
1 to 20 | A drop of 20 or more positions, or the site is no longer found within the tracked results | 12 → 32, or 12 → not found |
21 to 50 | A drop of more than 40 positions | 30 → 71 |
51 to 100 | Not protected by this particular rank-drop rule. Other checks can still apply. | 60 → not found does not trigger this rule |
When a drop is suspicious, SEOmonitor doesn't record it straight away. It uses the previously recorded rank for that date and checks the drop again on the next crawl.
How a suspicious drop is verified
Up to two crawls can be held. Days without a crawl don't count towards this.
If the next crawl returns your site within the normal range, that result is recorded and the check starts over.
If the drop is still there after two held crawls, it is recorded as your new rank.
A full-depth crawl that returns the same drop again can confirm it sooner.
What does this safeguard not cover?
This is a check for large drops, not every ranking movement. Smaller drops and improvements do not trigger it.
Checking results that end earlier than expected
Sometimes Google stops showing results sooner than expected. For example, it may return only four pages and display a message saying that similar results have been omitted. If your website would normally appear further down, that shorter set of results could make it look as though your page has disappeared.
SEOmonitor checks again before accepting an unexpectedly short set of results. This helps avoid recording a missing rank simply because one response was cut short.
Google may still return fewer than ten pages after these checks. In that case, the SERP Viewer can show a shorter collection.
Discarding rejected attempts
When a page is requested again, anything found in the rejected attempt is dropped. Only accepted pages feed into the recorded rank, so a position that appeared only in a rejected response can't end up in your data.
Checking that results are complete
For keywords that usually return at least 20 results, SEOmonitor checks that each response is as complete as the pages collected suggest. If it contains fewer than half the expected results and Google hasn't signalled the end of its results, the response isn't recorded. SEOmonitor uses previously recorded data for that date.
Unlike the drop check, this applies to every result, with no limit on how many times it can step in.
Retrying pages that fail to process
If a results page can't be read or processed, it is requested again a limited number of times before a result is produced.