Is it possible to track rank history

[anthonytjm]

I would like to know is it possible to track a keywords past ranking history? We would like to check the ranking history of some potential vendors, but only get data from the point I add them to Alabs, moz etc. Id like to go back a year to see the trend in their rankings. Is this possible and what tool or process can be used to achieve this. Thanks in advance.

[PaddyDisplays]

As far as I'm aware there is no such tool, and I would be surprised if there was.

[SamuelScott]

It's impossible to get past rankings. You can only start to monitor them now and then record the changes manually or with a program. One example is Moz's Rank Checker (subscription required): https://moz.com/researchtools/rank-tracker

However, rank is increasingly a useless term because every person in the world sees different SERPs pages based on his or her location, language, search history, Google+ use, and a lot more. The closest that you can get is to get non-personalized rankings for a given location, but even then, that will just be an estimate.

[JaneCopland]

Hi Anthony,

Unless you find a campaign or individual who has been tracking results, either for a specific keyword or for a specific domain, you can't retroactively do this through tools like Moz.

You can use Searchmetrics' domain visibility tool to see how dominant a site has been in its niche over time, however, which gives you a rough understanding of whether it has ranked well or poorly for its keywords over time: http://suite.searchmetrics.com/en/research/domains/visibility

My former agency has an in-house process like this that we used daily (I wrote about how it works in this post, although it has been developed into a tool and is more sophisticated now). It's useful for when you want to look at historic performance but don't have specific ranking reports and Searchmetrics is a great public alternative.

I hope this helps!

Jane