YouTube Rank Tracker - Keyword Position for Videos & Channels

Find out where your YouTube videos and your channel rank in YouTube search for every keyword you care about - by country, with position changes since the last check and the competitors ranking above you. No login, no YouTube account and no API setup needed.

What you get

One row per keyword x tracked video/channel:

• position - your rank in YouTube search results (1 = top result), or null if you are not in the scanned results
• found - whether your video or channel appears at all
• allPositions - every position your channel holds for the keyword (great for spotting channels that own a search page)
• matchedVideoId, matchedTitle, matchedUrl, views, channelName - the video that ranked
• previousPosition, positionChange, previousCheckedAt, movement - how your rank moved since the last run (up, down, unchanged, entered, dropped, first-check, not-found); positionChange is positive when you moved up
• topCompetitors - the top videos for the keyword with position, title, channel, views and upload age
• estimatedResults - YouTube's estimate of how many results exist for the keyword
• scannedResults, country, language, checkedAt - context for every check

Export to JSON, CSV, Excel or Google Sheets straight from the Apify console, or pull results via the API.

Use cases

• YouTube SEO rank tracking - monitor keyword rankings for your videos daily or weekly
• Channel visibility reporting - see how many top-50 spots your channel holds for each topic
• Competitor analysis - track rival channels and see who outranks you for your target keywords
• Agency and client reporting - rank reports across many keywords, videos and countries
• Video launch monitoring - watch a new upload climb (or drop) in search after publishing

How to use

1. Enter your Keywords, one per line.
2. Enter the Videos or channels to track - video URLs or IDs, and/or channel URLs, @handles or channel IDs. A channel matches any of its videos.
3. Pick the Country and Language you want to see results for.
4. Set Search depth (how many results to scan, default 50, max 200) and how many Top competitors to include.
5. Run the actor. Results appear in the Dataset tab.
6. Schedule it (daily or weekly) to build rank history. Every run compares against the previous check of the same keyword, target, country and language, so positionChange and movement fill in automatically from the second run onward.

How positions are counted

• Positions count organic video results in the order YouTube shows them, starting at 1.
• Ads, channel cards, playlists, mixes and "people also watched"-style shelves are not counted.
• Videos YouTube repeats further down the list only count the first time they appear.
• With Include Shorts off (default), Shorts are skipped entirely. With it on, Shorts count too - including those inside the Shorts shelves, in the order shown.
• For a channel target, position is the channel's best-ranked video, and allPositions lists all of them.

Good to know

• Rankings move a little from search to search. YouTube personalises and shuffles results slightly even for logged-out viewers, so a change of one or two places between checks is normal. Look at trends over several runs rather than a single change.
• Country matters. YouTube ranks results by where the viewer is, so each search is made as a viewer located in the country you pick.
• Language matters too. Changing the language changes rankings, so keep it the same across runs you want to compare. History is kept separately for each keyword, target, country, language and Shorts setting.

Output example

{
  "keyword": "espresso machine review",
  "target": "@jameshoffmann",
  "targetType": "channel",
  "targetId": "UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ",
  "found": true,
  "position": 1,
  "allPositions": [1, 18, 25, 26, 33, 36, 48],
  "matchedVideoId": "mAYbmcqPphc",
  "matchedTitle": "The Fellow ES1 Espresso Machine Review",
  "matchedUrl": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAYbmcqPphc",
  "matchedIsShort": false,
  "views": 751100,
  "channelName": "James Hoffmann",
  "channelId": "UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ",
  "previousPosition": 2,
  "positionChange": 1,
  "previousCheckedAt": "2026-09-24T12:27:55.442Z",
  "movement": "up",
  "country": "US",
  "language": "en",
  "includeShorts": false,
  "searchDepth": 50,
  "scannedResults": 50,
  "estimatedResults": 2320307,
  "topCompetitors": [
    {
      "position": 1,
      "videoId": "mAYbmcqPphc",
      "title": "The Fellow ES1 Espresso Machine Review",
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAYbmcqPphc",
      "channelName": "James Hoffmann",
      "channelId": "UCMb0O2CdPBNi-QqPk5T3gsQ",
      "views": 751100,
      "publishedText": "1 month ago",
      "isShort": false
    }
  ],
  "checkedAt": "2026-09-24T12:31:02.118Z"
}

Pricing

You pay per row: one result = one keyword checked for one tracked video or channel. Searching 10 keywords for 2 targets produces 20 results. Each keyword is searched only once per run, no matter how many targets you track.

Tracking a country other than the United States means searching from a local connection in that country, which costs more to run. For non-US countries, each search results page scanned is billed as an extra international search page event on top of the per-row price. A search depth of 50 usually takes 3–7 pages per keyword; lower the depth to keep costs down.

FAQ

Why is my video "not found" when I can see it in search? YouTube shows slightly different results to different people and locations. Check that the country and language match what you are looking at, and try a higher search depth.

Can I track Shorts? Yes. Add the Short's URL as a target and turn on Include Shorts.

How do I build a ranking history? Create a schedule for this actor in the Apify console. Each run records its result, and the next run reports the change. Export each run's dataset, or connect it to Google Sheets, to chart ranks over time.