Rank Tracker API
The Rank Tracker API built for developers
A rank tracker API that returns live Google positions for any keyword, location, and device — then lets you store the history yourself. One REST endpoint, $0.30 per 1,000 checks, sub-second responses across 195 countries.
{ "searchTime": 0.17, "totalResults": 85000, "page": 1, "organic": [ { "position": 1, "title": "31.10. Connection Pools and Data Sources", "link": "www.postgresql.org/docs/…", "domain": "postgresql.org", "snippet": "For an environment without an application se…" }, { "position": 2, "domain": "medium.com", … }, { "position": 3, "domain": "stackoverflow.blog", … } ], "credits": 1}What is a rank tracker API and what does rank tracking cost per keyword?
A rank tracker API is a single endpoint that returns a live search result page with a position number on every organic entry — you find your domain in that array and its position is your rank. Searlo charges $0.30 per 1,000 checks, so one keyword tracked daily for a month costs about $0.009.
That is the whole mechanism: one GET request per keyword per location, one lookup in the response. There is no project to configure, no keyword cap, and no per-seat fee, because you own the schedule, the history table, and the reporting. Tracking 5,000 keywords once a day is roughly $45/month in queries; the same 5,000 keywords on SerpAPI's Developer tier rate of $15.00 per 1,000 would be about $2,250/month.
- Cost per rank check
- $0.0003 (=$0.30 per 1,000)— our pricing
- One keyword, daily, for a month
- ~$0.009
- 5,000 keywords, daily, for a month
- ~$45 in queries
- Keyword cap
- None — you pay per query, not per tracked term
- Locations
- 195 countries via gl/hl, plus language targeting
- Free to start
- 3,000 credits, no card— our pricing
- SerpAPI, same volume
- $15.00 per 1,000 on the $75/5,000 Developer plan ($25.00/1,000 on the $25 Starter plan)— serpapi.com/pricing
Third-party figures on this page last verified against the sources linked above. Prices change; if you find one of these stale, tell us and we will correct it.
Most rank trackers are closed SaaS dashboards. They own your data, cap your keywords, and charge per seat. A rank tracker API flips that model: you call an endpoint, get the live SERP with exact positions, and build the tracker, the schedule, and the reporting on your own infrastructure.
Searlo is a rank tracker API in the literal sense — a single GET request returns the full organic result set with each result's position, domain, title, and link. Find your domain in the array and you have its rank. Run it on a cron, fan it out across thousands of keywords, and you have a rank tracker that costs $0.30 per 1,000 checks instead of hundreds of dollars per month.
"Rank tracker API" and "rank tracking API" describe the same thing, and both are what this endpoint is: the tracker is whatever you build on top of the position data it returns.
Because the same endpoint also returns the surrounding organic results, you track not just where you rank but what is competing for attention around you.
Features
Exact position data
Every organic result carries its real position so you can pull any domain's rank for any keyword/location pair.
195-country localization
Set gl and hl to track rankings exactly as they appear in any country and language market.
Full organic context
Titles, snippets, and metadata come back in the same response — not just ten blue links.
Sub-second responses
Low-latency calls make high-frequency monitoring of priority keywords practical.
Track on your schedule
Daily, hourly, or on-demand — you own the cron and the history store, with no keyword caps.
Scales to bulk
Fan out across tens of thousands of keywords with simple concurrency; pay only per query.
Get started in one request
Pull the SERP, find your domain in the organic array, and you have its rank. That is the entire rank tracker.
curl "https://api.searlo.tech/api/v1/search/web?q=best%20running%20shoes&num=10" \
-H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"import requests
r = requests.get(
"https://api.searlo.tech/api/v1/search/web",
params={"q": "best running shoes", "num": 10},
headers={"x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY"},
)
results = r.json()["organic"]
# position of your domain in the SERP
rank = next(
(o["position"] for o in results
if "yourdomain.com" in o["domain"]),
None,
)
print("rank:", rank)const res = await fetch(
"https://api.searlo.tech/api/v1/search/web?q=" +
encodeURIComponent("best running shoes") + "&num=10",
{ headers: { "x-api-key": "YOUR_API_KEY" } },
);
const { organic } = await res.json();
const rank = organic.find(o =>
o.domain.includes("yourdomain.com"))?.position ?? null;
console.log("rank:", rank);Searlo vs SerpAPI
SerpAPI is the default many rank trackers are built on. Searlo returns the same structured SERP data at a fraction of the cost.
| Capability | Searlo | SerpAPI |
|---|---|---|
| Price per 1,000 searches | $0.30 | $15.00 (Developer tier) |
| 100,000 checks | $43.97 one-time ($0.44/1K) | $725/mo Searcher ($7.25/1K) |
| Position data in response | Yes — every organic result | Yes |
| Free credits to start | 3,000 | 250 / month |
| TOON token-efficient format | Yes (63% fewer tokens) | No |
| MCP protocol for AI agents | Native | No |
How rank tracking with an API actually works
A rank check is one SERP fetch plus one lookup. You request the search results for a keyword in a target location, receive the organic results with positions, and find the entry whose domain matches yours. That number is your rank for that keyword in that market at that moment.
To build history, store each result with a timestamp in your own database. Re-run on a schedule and you have a time series of positions you can chart, alert on, and report to clients — without paying a per-keyword SaaS fee.
- Track any domain, not just your own — monitor competitors
- Track by country, language, and device
- Capture organic context alongside position
- No keyword limits — pay per query, not per tracked term
Building a Google position checker: the four moving parts
A position checker is not a big system. It is a keyword list, a scheduler, a request, and a table. The request returns the live result page; the table keeps yesterday's number so you can see the change.
The part teams underestimate is location. A rank is not a single number — it is a number for a country, a language, and a device. Store gl and hl alongside every reading or your history will average together markets that moved in opposite directions.
- Keyword list — the pairs you care about: keyword × country × language
- Scheduler — a cron per bucket: daily for the long tail, hourly for the terms you defend
- Request — one GET per pair; the organic array comes back with a position on every entry
- History table — keyword, market, position, checked_at, plus the URL that ranked, so you can tell a rank drop from a URL swap
What the response actually contains
Each organic entry carries position, title, link, domain, displayedLink, snippet, and breadcrumb, plus favicon and thumbnail where Google shows them. That is enough to answer more than 'where do I rank' — you can see which of your URLs Google chose, what title it is displaying for that URL, and who is directly above you.
The URL matters as much as the number. A page dropping from 4 to 9 is one problem; the same keyword suddenly ranking a different URL of yours is a cannibalisation problem, and only the returned link tells you which one you have.
- position — the organic rank, as an integer
- link and domain — which URL ranked, so you can catch URL swaps and cannibalisation
- title and snippet — the title and description Google is actually displaying, not your <title> tag
- totalResults — a rough competition-size proxy for the keyword
"Best rank tracker with an API" — the two categories, honestly
Search that phrase and you get two different kinds of product mixed into one list, and picking the wrong category costs you a rebuild.
The first category is a rank-tracking SaaS that exposes an API over its own stored projects — SE Ranking, AccuRanker, Nightwatch, Advanced Web Ranking. You add keywords to their project, they check on their schedule, and the API reads their history back to you. That is the right choice if you want someone else to own the storage, the retry logic, and the daily cadence, and you accept their keyword limits and per-seat pricing.
The second category is a SERP data API — Searlo, SerpAPI, DataForSEO. There is no project and no stored history; you get the live result page with positions and you build the tracker. That is the right choice if you are shipping a product on top of the data, need markets or cadences their plans do not cover, or want the unit cost to be a per-query number you control.
Searlo is squarely the second category, and the honest summary is: if you want a dashboard tomorrow, buy the first kind; if you are building the dashboard, the second kind is cheaper by an order of magnitude and the data is yours.
Is there a keyword ranking API from Google itself?
Not for live positions. Google's Search Console API returns your own site's average position, impressions, clicks, and CTR per query — aggregated, delayed by two to three days, limited to properties you own, and rounded into an average that hides the day's real number.
That makes the two sources complementary rather than competing. Search Console tells you which queries already send you impressions and roughly where you sit. A rank tracking API tells you the exact position, in a specific market, today, for any domain — including competitors, who never appear in your Search Console at all.
- Search Console API: your own property, average position, 2–3 day lag, no competitor data
- Rank tracking API: any domain, exact position, live, any country/language
- Common pattern: Search Console to find the queries that matter, a rank API to watch them daily
Why developers pick an API over a rank-tracking SaaS
SaaS rank trackers like BrightData, SE Ranking, and Keyword.com are built for end users clicking around a dashboard. If you are building a product — an agency reporting tool, an SEO platform, an internal monitor — you need the data, not someone else's UI.
An API gives you ownership of the schedule, the storage, the alerting logic, and the presentation. It also gives you a unit cost that scales linearly: at $0.30 per 1,000 checks, tracking 5,000 keywords daily costs about $45 a month in queries, versus hundreds in seat-based SaaS pricing.
What teams build on the rank tracking API
- Agency client rank reports and white-label dashboards
- SEO SaaS platforms needing position data at scale
- Competitor visibility and share-of-voice monitoring
- Local rank tracking across cities and countries
- Algorithm-update and SERP-volatility detection
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What is a rank tracker API?
A rank tracker API returns live search engine results with each result's position, so you can programmatically find any domain's rank for a keyword and store the history yourself instead of using a closed SaaS dashboard.
Is a rank tracker API the same as a rank tracking API?
Yes — the two phrasings are used interchangeably for the same thing: an endpoint that returns live SERP positions you can query programmatically. Searlo's single endpoint covers both, so there is no separate product or price for one or the other.
How do I get my keyword's rank from the response?
Request the SERP for your keyword, then scan the organic array for the result whose domain matches yours. Its position field is your rank. See the code samples above.
Can I track rankings by location and language?
Yes. Pass gl (country) and hl (language) parameters to get rankings exactly as they appear in that market, across all 195 supported countries.
How much does rank tracking cost?
Each rank check is one search at $0.30 per 1,000 queries. Tracking 5,000 keywords once a day is roughly $45/month. You start with 3,000 free credits.
How often can I check rankings?
As often as your workflow needs — there are no keyword caps. Run daily pulls, hourly checks for priority terms, or on-demand lookups.
Can I track competitors, not just my own site?
Yes. The response contains every ranking domain, so you can track any competitor's positions and build share-of-voice analytics.
Does it include the surrounding organic results?
Yes. Titles, snippets, and domains for the full result set are parsed into the same response, so you see what's competing alongside your own rank.
What is the best rank tracker with an API?
It depends which of two products you actually want. If you want someone else to store the keywords and run the daily checks, a rank-tracking SaaS with an API over its own projects (SE Ranking, AccuRanker, Nightwatch, Advanced Web Ranking) is the right category, and you accept keyword caps and seat pricing. If you are building the tracker — an agency reporting tool, an SEO product, an internal monitor — a SERP data API is the right category: you get live positions for any domain and own the storage. Searlo is the second kind, at $0.30 per 1,000 checks with no keyword cap.
Is there a Google keyword ranking API from Google?
Not for live positions. Google's Search Console API returns your own property's average position, impressions, clicks, and CTR per query, with a two-to-three day lag, and only for sites you own — it cannot tell you a competitor's rank or today's exact position. A rank tracking API returns the live result page with an exact position for any domain, in any country and language. Most teams use both: Search Console to find which queries matter, a rank API to watch them daily.
How do I build a Google position checker?
Four parts: a list of keyword × country × language pairs, a cron that walks the list, one GET request per pair to the search endpoint, and a table storing keyword, market, position, the URL that ranked, and a timestamp. Storing the ranking URL matters as much as the number — it is the only way to tell a genuine rank drop from Google swapping which of your pages ranks.
Does the API return Google AI Overviews?
No. The response contains organic results — position, title, link, domain, snippet, breadcrumb — and no AI Overview content. Searlo does not extract AI Overview text, and we will not claim otherwise; if AI Overview coverage is a hard requirement, a tool built specifically for that is the honest answer. What organic position data does give you is the second-order signal: when an AI Overview rolls out for a query, the organic set underneath it usually reshuffles, and a daily position history is how you see that happen.
How many keywords can I track?
There is no keyword limit — the cost is per check, not per tracked term. 1,000 keywords checked daily is about 30,000 checks a month (~$9 at the $0.30/1K rate); 10,000 keywords daily is about 300,000 checks (~$90). Bucket by importance rather than by plan: hourly for the terms you defend, daily for the core set, weekly for the long tail.