Ranking
SEO and AI visibility
SEO and AI visibility
Ranking is the position your page appears at in the search results for a given query; 'to rank' is the matching verb.
There is no fixed position any more. Results vary by location, device, language, history and moment, and above the blue links sit ads, maps, videos or an AI answer. What a tool calls 'position 3' can be far down the screen.
So measure wider: average position and impressions in Search Console, the number of terms you appear for, and above all the traffic and enquiries that follow.
Rankings move slowly and in jumps at the same time. Judge over weeks, not days, and check technical causes and algorithm updates first when something drops suddenly.
In practice
Steering on a single keyword. A page appearing for a hundred related terms usually delivers more than being number one for one term.
Related terms
- SERPThe SERP is a search engine's results page: alongside blue links it holds ads, maps, videos, question boxes and AI answers.
- SEOSEO is the work that makes your pages findable in search engines without paying per click. It has three parts: technology, content and authority.
- KeywordA keyword is the word or phrase someone types into a search engine — in other words, how a question gets phrased.
- On-page SEOOn-page SEO is everything you control on the page itself: content, heading structure, title and description, internal links, images and overall readability.