Google Position Checker

Track where your website ranks on Google for any keyword. Check positions across 230+ countries, compare mobile vs desktop results, detect featured snippets and People Also Ask questions, and bulk-check up to 1,000 keywords per run — at a fraction of the cost of traditional rank-tracking SaaS tools.

What is Google Position Checker?

Google Position Checker is a purpose-built rank tracking actor for SEO professionals, digital marketing agencies, e-commerce managers, and developers who need programmatic access to Google search rankings. Unlike generic SERP scrapers, this actor is optimised specifically for rank tracking — it returns structured, consistent results designed for monitoring, reporting, and automation workflows.

Whether you're tracking your own domain's keyword performance, monitoring competitors, or building a rank-tracking dashboard or SaaS product, this actor delivers the data you need in a clean JSON format ready for analysis.

What Can It Do?

• Rank position tracking — Find exactly where your domain ranks for any keyword (positions 1–100), including position 0 (featured snippet ownership)
• Multi-country support — Check rankings for 230+ country-specific Google indexes using ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes (us, gb, de, fr, au, jp, and more)
• Mobile vs desktop — Google returns different rankings for mobile and desktop users; check both to understand your true reach
• Featured snippet detection — Identify which domain owns the featured snippet (position 0) for each keyword, and whether your domain qualifies
• People Also Ask extraction — Capture the PAA questions Google surfaces for each keyword — valuable for content strategy and FAQ optimisation
• Local pack detection — Detect Google Maps / local pack results and extract business listings when present
• Full SERP output — Optionally return all ranked results for complete competitive landscape analysis
• Bulk keyword checking — Process up to 1,000 keywords per run with intelligent rate limiting and retry logic
• Anti-bot resilience — Uses residential proxies, randomised user agents, progressive backoff, and retry logic to maximise success rates against Google's anti-scraping measures

What Data Can You Extract?

Field	Description
keyword	The search keyword checked
domain	Target domain being tracked
position	Rank position (1–100, or 0 for featured snippet, null if not found)
page	SERP page number (1 = first page)
url	Full URL of the ranked page
title	Page title of the ranked result
snippet	Description snippet from the search result
displayUrl	Breadcrumb URL shown in the result
additionalPositions	Other positions where the domain appears
featuredSnippet	Owner, URL, and content of the featured snippet
peopleAlsoAsk	Related questions from People Also Ask
localPack	Google Maps local pack results (business name, address, rating)
knowledgePanel	Whether a Knowledge Panel was detected
totalResults	Total results count reported by Google
serp	Full SERP entries (with includeSerp: true)
checkedAt	ISO 8601 timestamp of the check

How to Use

Zero-Config Quick Start

Run with no configuration. The actor checks the default keyword "apify web scraper" and returns results immediately. Ideal for testing the actor before configuring your own keywords.

Single Keyword Check

{
  "keywords": ["best project management software"],
  "domain": "monday.com",
  "country": "us",
  "device": "desktop"
}

Returns the position where monday.com appears in US desktop results for this keyword, plus featured snippet and PAA data.

Bulk Keyword Check

{
  "keywords": [
    "crm software",
    "project management tools",
    "best task manager",
    "team collaboration software",
    "monday vs asana"
  ],
  "domain": "monday.com",
  "country": "us",
  "includeSerp": true,
  "includeFeaturedSnippet": true,
  "includePeopleAlsoAsk": true
}

Multi-Country Tracking

{
  "keywords": ["web scraping tool"],
  "domain": "apify.com",
  "country": "gb",
  "language": "en",
  "device": "mobile"
}

Local SEO

{
  "keywords": ["plumber near me", "emergency plumber"],
  "domain": "acmeplumbing.com",
  "country": "us",
  "location": "Chicago, IL",
  "includeLocalPack": true
}

Pricing

This actor uses Pay-Per-Event pricing at $3.90 per 1,000 keywords checked ($0.0039 per keyword).

Pricing includes all platform compute costs — no hidden fees.

You are only charged for successful checks. Blocked, CAPTCHA-blocked, and zero-result queries are not charged.

Compare to SaaS alternatives:

• SEMrush: ~$120+/month for rank tracking
• Ahrefs: ~$99+/month
• SERPapi: ~$50+/month for API access

This actor is 10x cheaper for programmatic usage at scale, with no monthly minimums.

Proxy Requirements

This actor requires residential proxy to access Google, which blocks datacenter IP addresses.

• Apify paid plans: Residential proxy is included. The actor uses it by default.
• Apify free plan: Free plan does not include residential proxy. You can provide your own residential proxy URL in the proxy configuration, or the actor will attempt to run without proxy (results may be empty or blocked).
• Without residential proxy: The actor will still run but may return zero results due to IP blocking by Google.

Input and Output Examples

Input:

{
  "keywords": ["apify web scraper"],
  "domain": "apify.com",
  "country": "us",
  "device": "desktop",
  "includeFeaturedSnippet": true,
  "includePeopleAlsoAsk": true
}

Output:

{
  "keyword": "apify web scraper",
  "domain": "apify.com",
  "position": 1,
  "page": 1,
  "url": "https://apify.com/",
  "title": "Apify: Full-Stack Web Scraping and Data Extraction Platform",
  "snippet": "Extract data from websites with ready-made scrapers or build your own.",
  "displayUrl": "apify.com",
  "additionalPositions": [],
  "country": "us",
  "language": "en",
  "location": "",
  "device": "desktop",
  "featuredSnippet": {
    "isOwner": false,
    "ownerDomain": "example.com",
    "ownerUrl": "https://example.com/page",
    "content": "Web scraping is the process of..."
  },
  "peopleAlsoAsk": [
    "What is a web scraper?",
    "Is web scraping legal?",
    "What is the best web scraping tool?"
  ],
  "localPack": null,
  "knowledgePanel": false,
  "totalResults": "482,000,000",
  "serp": [],
  "error": null,
  "errorCode": null,
  "checkedAt": "2026-03-11T12:00:00.000Z"
}

Related Tools by Junipr

• Sitemap Generator — Generate XML sitemaps and audit site structure
• SEO Audit Tool — Full technical SEO audit with scores and recommendations
• Website to RSS — Convert any website into an RSS feed
• Google News Scraper — Scrape Google News by keyword or topic

FAQ

How accurate is Google position tracking?

Results reflect live Google rankings at the time of the check using residential proxies. Accuracy is typically 90–95%+ compared to manual searches, though Google personalises results by user history, IP, and device. This actor neutralises personalisation using pws=0 (no personalised search) and residential IPs matched to the target country.

Can I check rankings for different countries?

Yes. Set the country parameter to any ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (e.g., gb for UK, de for Germany, au for Australia). The actor queries the appropriate localised Google index. 230+ countries are supported.

How often should I check my rankings?

For most use cases, weekly checks are sufficient to track meaningful trends. Daily checks are appropriate for competitive monitoring or high-stakes keywords. The actor rate-limits requests to protect against blocks, so bulk runs may take longer. Pricing is per-check, so there are no additional costs for more frequent runs.

Does it detect featured snippets?

Yes. When includeFeaturedSnippet is enabled (default: true), the actor identifies which domain owns the featured snippet (position 0) for each keyword. If your target domain owns the snippet, position is set to 0 and featuredSnippet.isOwner is true.

Can I track mobile vs desktop rankings separately?

Yes. Set device to desktop or mobile. Mobile and desktop rankings frequently differ — Google applies mobile-first indexing, so mobile rankings can reflect more recent changes. Running the same keyword set on both devices gives you a complete picture of your visibility.

Why do my results differ from manual Google searches?

Google personalises results based on your search history, location, and browser. This actor uses residential proxies, pws=0 (personalisation disabled), and country/language parameters to return as close to objective, country-level results as possible. Small differences are normal and expected — the actor tracks relative trends reliably over time.