Understanding the Dashboard
Every color, arrow, marker, and tooltip on the Rank Tracker grid, explained cell by cell.
The Dashboard sheet is the only tab you're expected to read regularly. It's redrawn automatically every time you open the spreadsheet or make an edit, so it always reflects the latest data without you having to refresh anything.
Layout at a glance
| Area | Contains |
|---|---|
| Row 1 | Logo + "Keyword Rank Tracker · powered by SERPHouse.com" |
| Row 2 | Site: your target domain, and Credits: your live balance |
| Row 3 | Stats: Total Keywords, Total Locations, Keywords in Top 3, Keywords in Top 10, Average Position |
| Row 4 | Thin spacer |
| Row 5 (column B onward) | Locations, one column per location you track |
| Column A (row 6 onward) | Keywords, one row per keyword you track |
| Row 6+, Column B+ | The rank for that keyword at that location, on the most recent fetch |
Rows 1-4 are not editable
The header is redrawn on every open and every edit, which also reverts any manual change to that area. Think of it as a read-only status bar, not a cell you can type into. Your keywords (column A) and locations (row 5) are the only parts of the sheet meant for typing.
The header bar
- Credits bar (row 2): shows your last-known SERPHouse balance as
available / total. It turns red with a ⚠ LOW label once your balance drops below the low-credit threshold you've set. This number doesn't call the API on every render; it's refreshed after every fetch and by the Check credit balance menu item. See Credits & Pricing. - Stats bar (row 3): computed from your most recent date sheet only:
- Total Keywords / Total Locations: counts from the Dashboard grid itself.
- Keywords in Top 3 / Top 10: the number of distinct keywords ranking that well in at least one location.
- Average Position: the mean of every numeric rank found on the latest date (failed and not-ranked pairs are excluded from the average).
Reading a rank cell
Each cell in the grid can be in one of six states:
| Example | Meaning |
|---|---|
| (blank) | No result yet for the latest date; this pair hasn't been fetched today. |
| 12 | Ranked #12. Black/plain text means there's nothing to compare it to (first day tracked, or yesterday had no data). |
| 8 (+4 ↑) | Ranked #8, up 4 positions since yesterday. Green always means improvement; remember that a lower rank number is better. |
| 15 (-3 ↓) | Ranked #15, down 3 positions since yesterday. |
| - | Not ranked. The site wasn't found anywhere within your tracked Search depth on the latest fetch. This is a real, successful result: the site simply didn't appear. |
| F | Fetch failed. The last attempt for this pair errored (network issue, transient API error, etc). See Fetching Rankings. |
| X | Excluded. You typed X into this cell to stop tracking it. See Excluding a pair below. |
'F' is not the same as '-'
A red - is a confirmed result: your site genuinely isn't ranking.
An amber F means Rank Tracker doesn't know yet, because the check
itself failed. Treating an F as a ranking drop is the most common
misread of the Dashboard. Re-run Fetch rankings now to resolve it;
only the failed pairs are re-checked, so this costs nothing extra for
everything that already succeeded.
Tooltips & history
Hover over any rank cell to see:
- 🔗 the ranking URL: the exact page on your site that ranked, if one was found.
- 📊 History (Last 10 Days): the rank recorded on each of the last 10 dates, or "No Data" for days with nothing recorded.
For a failed (F) cell, the tooltip replaces the history with a short explanation instead, so you don't have to guess why a cell looks different.
Tip
Hovering is the fastest way to sanity-check a sudden change. You can see at a glance whether a drop is part of a trend or a one-day blip, without opening a single date sheet.
Invalid location names
If you type a location directly into row 5 instead of using Add location…, it's checked against SERPHouse's location database as you tab away from the cell:
- Recognized: the cell is left alone.
- Not recognized: the cell is highlighted red with a note explaining it isn't a valid SERPHouse location.
Full details, including how to search for valid locations, are on the Keywords & Locations page.
Excluding a pair
Type X directly into any rank cell to pause tracking for that one keyword + location pair:
- It's skipped by every future fetch, so 0 credits are spent on it for as long as the
Xstays there. - It's greyed out on the Dashboard and left out of the Summary sheet's KPIs.
- Nothing else is touched: history already recorded in date sheets is kept, and removing the
Xresumes tracking immediately (an empty cell is fetched again on the next run).
Excluding is purely forward-looking. It does not delete or hide anything in past date sheets. It only tells future fetches (and the Summary sheet) to skip this pair from now on.
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