Google SERP Rank & Visibility Monitor — PAA, Features + API

Know exactly where you stand on Google — for any list of keywords. This actor returns your organic ranking position, the People Also Ask questions, the SERP features present (ads, shopping, local pack, featured snippet), and your competitors' share of voice — as clean, alert-ready JSON. Track it over time and get only what changed since the last run.

Two ways to use it in one actor:

• Batch monitoring — run on a Schedule, store history, receive only changed keywords.
• Real-time API — run in Standby mode for a low-latency REST endpoint (/check) with a published OpenAPI schema you can plug into n8n, Make, a dashboard, or your own app.

Data is fetched through Apify's own Google SERP proxy — no CAPTCHAs, no headless browser, no third-party dependency, no proxy setup on your side.

Keywords: Google rank tracker, SERP monitor, keyword rank checker, People Also Ask scraper, SERP features, share of voice, competitor rank tracking, SEO monitoring, position tracker, Google SERP API, GEO, AEO, AI Overview detection.

💡 What you can do with it

• Rank tracking — monitor your organic position for target keywords across countries, languages and devices.
• Competitor share of voice — see who ranks against you and who owns each keyword.
• People Also Ask mining — pull PAA questions for content and SEO research.
• SERP-feature awareness — know when ads, shopping, local packs or featured snippets appear.
• Change alerts — run daily with onlyChanged and get only keywords that moved in the rankings.
• Real-time checks — hit the Standby /check endpoint from your CRM, Slack bot, Google Sheet, or AI agent.
• Bonus: AI Overview citations — when Google serves an AI Overview for a query, the cited source domains are captured too (hasAiOverview, aiOverviewSourceDomains).

⚙️ Input

Field	Description
keywords	Search queries to check.
targetDomain	Your domain (e.g. example.com). Leave empty to just map the SERP landscape.
competitorDomains	Competitor domains for share-of-voice comparison.
countryCode / languageCode	Where and in which language to search (gl / hl).
device	desktop or mobile.
topN	How deep to look for your domain in the organic results.
includePaa	Toggle People Also Ask extraction.
onlyChanged	Monitoring mode — output only keywords whose ranking changed since the last run.
maxKeywords	Cap keywords per run.

Example input

{
  "keywords": ["best crm software for small business", "project management tools"],
  "targetDomain": "example.com",
  "competitorDomains": ["competitor1.com", "competitor2.com"],
  "countryCode": "us",
  "languageCode": "en",
  "onlyChanged": false,
  "maxKeywords": 25
}

📤 Output (one row per keyword)

{
  "keyword": "best crm software for small business",
  "country": "us",
  "language": "en",
  "device": "desktop",
  "checkedAt": "2026-07-16T10:00:00.000Z",
  "searchUrl": "https://www.google.com/search?q=...",
  "organicTargetRank": 7,
  "organicTargetUrl": "https://example.com/crm",
  "featuredSnippetIsTarget": false,
  "paaQuestions": ["Which CRM is best for a small team?", "Is there a free CRM?"],
  "serpFeatures": ["peopleAlsoAsk", "ads"],
  "competitors": [
    { "domain": "competitor1.com", "organicRank": 2, "aioCited": false, "aioCitationRank": null }
  ],
  "shareOfVoice": { "example.com": 1, "competitor1.com": 1 },
  "visibilityScore": 34,
  "hasAiOverview": false,
  "aiOverviewCitesTarget": false,
  "aiOverviewSourceDomains": [],
  "changed": true,
  "changes": ["organic_rank:9->7"],
  "previousOrganicRank": 9,
  "sourceUrl": "https://www.google.com/search?q=..."
}

visibilityScore (0–100) is driven primarily by your organic ranking, with bonuses for a featured snippet and any AI Overview citation.

🔁 Daily monitoring

1. Run once with your keywords + targetDomain, onlyChanged: false to establish a baseline.
2. Add a daily Schedule in the Apify Console with onlyChanged: true.
3. Receive only keywords that moved — connect to Slack / email / Google Sheets / your data warehouse.

State (last-seen rank per keyword) is kept in a named key-value store so change detection survives across scheduled runs. Each account gets its own private store.

⚡ Real-time API (Standby mode)

Enable Standby and call the endpoint — see the interactive API / Standby tab (rendered from the OpenAPI schema):

GET https://<your-standby-url>/check?keyword=best%20crm%20software&targetDomain=example.com&country=us

Returns the same JSON record for a single query, in real time. /health is free; each /check is billed as one result.

🔧 How it works

SERP data is sourced through Apify's own Google SERP proxy — a sanctioned, CAPTCHA-free way to fetch Google result-page HTML. This actor parses it and adds the ranking, share-of-voice, change-detection and real-time-API layers on top. No headless browser, no proxy setup, low maintenance.

Note on AI Overviews: Google renders AI Overviews client-side and does not serve them to non-JavaScript clients, so they are captured when present but are not the primary signal — organic rank, PAA and SERP features are.

💳 Pricing

Pay-per-event: you pay per visibility check (one keyword in batch, or one /check request in Standby). No monthly subscription. Readiness probes and /health are free.

🔒 Data protection & fair use

• This tool analyzes public Google Search results for SEO monitoring, market research and competitive analysis. You are responsible for complying with applicable laws in your jurisdiction.
• It does not extract personal contact data.
• Results depend on Google and can vary by location, language and device.

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Not affiliated with Google. "Google" is a trademark of Google LLC. Data belongs to the respective owners.