Tool Update: Track Sub-Rankings Within Local Results

We’ve completed the roll out of another major update to our Local Rank Tracker tool. Within your local search ranking reports we now display the sub-rank for both carousel and local pack results.

The sub-rank refers to your position within the local pack or carousel, as well the overall ranking position on the page. This update gives you a much broader overview of where you are ranking in both organic & local results.

We have been rolling this update out for a little while now. Many existing BrightLocal customers will have already seen the new feature in their local ranking reports. For pre-existing reports that do not show this ‘sub-rank’ users will need to re-run these reports so that we gather & present sub-ranks.

In your updated ranking reports we still label your overall SERP position as a numeric value (eg. 1-10), but with the new feature, we identify results within a carousel or local pack with a letter (eg. A-E).

Sub-rank explained

Using the screenshot below to illustrate, if you see a number ‘2’ followed by letter ‘A’, this means that your website is in 2nd position on the page and in 1st position (‘A’) in the local pack itself.

• Carousel – 1, E (1st position in overall results, 5th in carousel)
• Local – 5, A (5th position in overall results, 1st in local block)

See below for a screenshot of the new feature in Local Rank Tracker:

In the above screenshot, the business ranks in the top 4 positions in Google; the first organic position, and the following 3 local results labelled A, B & C.

You can see a similar result for Bing, as below:

In the above example, the business ranks in the top ‘no. 1’ position (organic), followed by a ‘3rd party’ result at ‘no.2’. The local results start at position 3, and this business has the first 4 local pack results (A, B, C & D).

Currently this update is only live for local results in Google & Bing. We will be releasing this feature for Yahoo results in the next few days.

Below is an annotated screenshot which clarifies how we count SERP results. In Bing, a search for ‘coffee new york’ brings up the following results.

• Overall ranking results – ranking results are labelled 1-8 down the page
• Local results – start at no.3, are labelled A-E.

About the author

Ross Marchant

Ross is the former Marketing Manager for BrightLocal. With 9+ years SEO and content experience, Ross spearheaded the marketing and CRM initiatives which focus heavily on creating useful and informative content. Ross coordinated the research program at BrightLocal which delivers unique insights into both the SEO industry and local consumer behaviours.

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