To track your Google rankings, start with Google Search Console: it is free and fed by Google's own data. Add a daily rank tracker if your revenue depends on search: SE Ranking to track lots of keywords cheaply, Semrush for a full suite, Monitorank for pure tracking with alerts, Haloscan or Ranxplorer for the French market. Choose Ahrefs or SEObserver if backlinks come first. We compared 14 rank tracking tools on frequency, quota, cost per keyword, local tracking and reliability, based on the vendors' public prices.
A sudden ranking drop is not always an SEO issue: it can reveal a hacked site or an error after an update. We explain below how to tell the difference. This page is published by the maker of WP Masquerade, a WordPress security plugin: we sell no SEO tool and no link is an affiliate link (see our methodology).
Our picks at a glance
One tool per need, based on the plans and prices published by the vendors.
- Zero budget Google Search Console Real rankings measured by Google, plus security alerts, for free.
- Most keywords per euro SE Ranking 2,000 keywords updated daily from €109 per month.
- Full SEO suite Semrush Daily tracking down to ZIP code, AI Overviews and keyword research.
- Pure tracking and alerts Monitorank Daily, multi-engine, city-level, billed per keyword.
- French market, small budget Haloscan 800 daily keywords for €59 excl. VAT per month.
- Backlinks first Ahrefs Its own link index; weekly tracking is enough for a content site.
Rank tracking tools comparison table
The eight main tools, on the criteria that most often make the difference. Each plan is detailed in the reviews; tools from other European countries are covered in Tracking another market.
| Tool | Updates | Keywords (entry plan) | Entry price | Best for | Main limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Real data, 2 to 3 days late | Queries with impressions | Free | Every site, first | Average position, 16 months of history |
| Semrush | Daily | 500 | €134 per month | SMBs, e-commerce | Pricey for 500 keywords |
| Ahrefs | Weekly by default | 50 (Starter), 750 (Lite) | €27 per month | Content and backlinks | Daily is a paid add-on |
| SE Ranking | Daily | 2,000 | €109 per month | High volumes, local tracking | White label is an add-on |
| SEObserver | Not published, manual refresh | 150 | €99 per month | Link building, agencies | No self-serve trial |
| Haloscan | Daily | 800 | €59 excl. VAT per month | French market | No backlinks yet |
| Ranxplorer | “Continuous” (vendor) | 100 | €32 excl. VAT per month (annual) | Monitoring Google France | France only |
| Monitorank | Daily, top 50 | Per keyword | Via calculator (excl. VAT) | Agencies, local businesses | No backlinks, no audit |
What a rank tracker measures, and what it doesn't
A rank tracker queries Google for your keywords, from the country, city and device you choose, then records where your pages appear on the results page. Search Console simulates nothing: it reports what Google actually showed to real users. Both figures are right; they answer different questions.
- Frequency: daily at Semrush, SE Ranking, Haloscan and Monitorank, weekly by default at Ahrefs. Daily data shortens the gap between the start of a problem and the moment you see it; for a content site following trends, weekly is often enough.
- Quota: from 50 to 2,000 keywords in entry plans. Count one line per keyword, per device and per location: tracking 200 queries on mobile and desktop in three cities uses 1,200 lines. The long tail fills a quota fast.
- Mobile, desktop and local: results vary by device and city. Semrush, Ahrefs and SE Ranking go down to ZIP code, Monitorank to city level with the local pack; Haloscan documents neither mobile nor local tracking.
- Reliability: a tool sees a neutral results page, without the user's history or exact location, so not always what your customers see. A stable position can also bring fewer clicks when a generated answer (AI Overview) or a results block appears above it: watch clicks in Search Console, not just rank.
- Search Console, the free option: average position (your site's best spot for each query, averaged over impressions), 2 to 3 days of delay, 16 months of history, 1,000 rows in the interface and rare queries hidden for privacy. No keyword list of your own, no competitors.
The real price: cost per tracked keyword
The entry price alone is misleading: relative to keyword count and frequency, the gap ranges from 1 to more than 10.
| Tool and plan | Tracked keywords | Frequency | Price per month | Cost per keyword per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SE Ranking Core | 2,000 | Daily | €109 (€87.20 billed yearly) | ≈ €0.05 |
| Haloscan Starter | 800 | Daily | €59 excl. VAT | ≈ €0.07 excl. VAT |
| Ranxplorer Professionnel | 800 | “Continuous” | €59 excl. VAT (€49 billed yearly) | ≈ €0.07 excl. VAT |
| Ahrefs Lite | 750 | Weekly | €119 | ≈ €0.16 |
| Semrush SEO | 500 | Daily | €134 (€112.52 billed yearly) | ≈ €0.27 |
| Ranxplorer Rédacteur | 100 | “Continuous” | €32 excl. VAT (annual) | ≈ €0.32 excl. VAT |
| Ahrefs Starter | 50 | Weekly | €27 | ≈ €0.54 |
| SEObserver Freelance | 150 | Not published | €99 | ≈ €0.66 |
| Monitorank | Your choice | Daily | Via calculator | Not displayed |
The free starting point
United States
Google Search Console
Rankings as Google itself sees them, and the alarm if you get hacked
Google service Free Every site
- Measures Real average position
- Delay 2 to 3 days
- History 16 months
- Volume 1,000 rows, more via API or BigQuery
- Alerts Security, manual actions, indexing
Search Console is not a rank tracker: you don't give it a keyword list; it reports the queries your site actually appeared for, with impressions, clicks and average position. It is the only source that measures clicks, so the only one that shows whether a stable position still brings traffic when an AI Overview gets in the way.
Its value goes beyond SEO: the “Security issues”, “Manual actions” and “Page indexing” reports email you when Google detects hacked content or a page dropped from the index. No paid tool on this page does that. Its limits are those of an average: a page ranking 3rd in Paris and 15th in Lyon shows up around 9, and nothing tells you where your competitors rank.
Strengths
- Free, Google's own data
- Real clicks, not estimates
- Security and indexing alerts by email
Limits
- Average position, not per city
- 2 to 3 days late, 16 months of history
- No competitor tracking
Who it is for: Every site owner, before any other tool.
Our take: Essential, and enough for a brochure site; add daily tracking as soon as traffic drives revenue.
International SEO suites
Three suites covering keyword research, backlinks, audits and tracking in more than 140 countries. They differ mainly in frequency and cost per keyword.
United States
Semrush
The most complete suite, with daily tracking from the entry plan
SEO suite From €134 per month SMBs, e-commerce
- Updates Daily
- SEO plan 500 keywords, 5 sites
- Location Down to ZIP code
- Engines Google, Bing, Baidu, AI engines
- Trial 7 days, limited free plan
The Position Tracking module checks your keywords daily on desktop, mobile and tablet, down to ZIP code, with up to 20 competitors and results page features, including AI Overviews. For an online store, it is the tool that best shows why a category loses clicks without losing rank: a product block or a generated answer has appeared above it.
Price is the downside: €134 per month (€112.52 billed yearly) for 500 keywords, about €0.27 per keyword, five times SE Ranking. You are paying for keyword research (28.8 billion keywords according to the vendor, 142 country databases), audits and link analysis. The API is reserved for the Advanced plan on quote, and white-label reports cost €19.18 per month as an add-on.
Strengths
- Daily tracking by device and ZIP code
- Tracks AI Overviews and AI engines
- Full suite in one subscription
Limits
- High cost per keyword
- API on quote only
- White label is an add-on
Who it is for: SMBs, e-commerce and marketing teams who want research, audits, links and tracking in one place.
Our take: The default choice if you use the whole suite; too expensive if you only want to track rankings.
Singapore
Ahrefs
Its own backlink index, weekly tracking by default
SEO suite From €27 per month Content and link building
- Updates Weekly, daily as an add-on
- Quotas Starter 50, Lite 750, Standard 2,000
- Location Country down to ZIP code
- API From Lite, with caps
- Free Webmaster Tools, no tracking
Ahrefs is a link tool first: its backlink index is built by its own crawler, and that is where it stands out. Rank Tracker follows Google on mobile and desktop, down to ZIP code, with 19 types of results page features, but once a week on every plan. Daily tracking is a paid add-on whose price is not displayed.
For a content site that publishes and earns links, a weekly check is enough, and Lite (€119, 750 keywords) works out at €0.16 per keyword. For a site that sells, being a week late on a drop is costly: prefer a daily tool. Starter at €27 tracks only 50 keywords. To get links rather than analyze them, see our comparison of link building platforms.
Strengths
- Its own backlink index
- API from the Lite plan
- Free Webmaster Tools for your sites
Limits
- Weekly by default
- Daily tracking price not displayed
- Starter capped at 50 keywords
Who it is for: Publishers, content teams and link building specialists.
Our take: The best choice when links matter more than day-to-day tracking.
United States
SE Ranking
2,000 keywords tracked daily from the Core plan
SEO suite From €109 per month Volume and local
- Updates Daily
- Core plan 2,000 keywords, 10 projects
- Location City, region, ZIP code
- Engines Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube
- Trial 14 days, no card
SE Ranking offers the largest daily quota in this comparison for the price: 2,000 keywords and 10 projects for €109 per month (€87.20 billed yearly), about €0.05 per keyword. That is enough to track a store on mobile and desktop in several cities, where Semrush forces you to choose. Its 188 country databases also make it a good option for a multilingual site.
Tracking covers more than 35 results page features. Agencies pay extra: Agency Pack (white label) at €59 per month and extra API at €39 per month, billed yearly. The 14-day trial with no card lets you check accuracy on your own keywords before paying.
Strengths
- Best price per daily keyword
- Fine local tracking, four engines
- Trial without a credit card
Limits
- White label costs extra
- Extra API as an annual add-on
Who it is for: Freelancers, SMBs, local businesses and multilingual sites that want many daily keywords.
Our take: The best balance of quota, frequency and price for most WordPress sites.
Tools built for the French market
Four French-language tools, more specialized: French keyword databases, lower prices or per-keyword billing. Their shared limitation is international coverage.
Turkey French-language tool
SEObserver
Rankings and Majestic backlinks in one tool
Rankings and links From €99 per month Link building, agencies Terms under Turkish law
- Updates Not published, manual refresh
- Freelance plan 150 keywords
- Backlinks Majestic data
- API Prepaid credits
- Trial Occasional 7-day invitations
SEObserver combines your “personal keywords”, the top 100 from its own database and Majestic backlinks, sorted by CMS and link type. For a link builder, that is a concrete advantage: see who is climbing on a query and which links they got, without juggling two subscriptions.
Its cost per keyword is the highest in this comparison (€99 for 150 keywords, about €0.66), and the vendor publishes neither its update frequency nor whether prices include VAT. Its terms of use name a company in Istanbul and exclude the right of withdrawal: read them before paying for a year (€990).
Strengths
- Rankings and Majestic links together
- French-language interface and audience
- Multi-user plans
Limits
- Highest cost per keyword
- Frequency and taxes not published
- No self-serve trial
Who it is for: Agencies and link building specialists who analyze the links of rising competitors.
Our take: Relevant for link building; not a budget daily tracking tool.
France
Haloscan
Daily tracking on three engines for €59 excl. VAT per month
Keywords and tracking From €59 excl. VAT per month French market
- Updates Daily, with alerts
- Starter plan 800 keywords, 5 projects
- Engines Google, Bing, YouTube
- API No extra cost
- Free Free plan, no tracking
Haloscan is first a keyword research tool focused on the French market, and its daily tracking is the cheapest per keyword after SE Ranking: 800 keywords for €59 excl. VAT, about €0.07. Alerts on significant changes and an API at no extra cost make it a good choice for a freelancer managing a few French sites.
Its limits are clear: no backlink analysis yet (announced as “coming soon”), a single market, and neither mobile nor city-level tracking is documented. The free plan (50 keyword searches and 25 site analyses per month) does not include rank tracking.
Strengths
- Low cost per keyword
- Alerts and API included
- French keyword database
Limits
- No backlinks yet
- France only
- Mobile and local not documented
Who it is for: Freelancers, SMBs and publishers working only in French.
Our take: The best value for a 100% French site, to be paired with another tool for links.
France
Ranxplorer
Competitor visibility on Google France, from €32 excl. VAT per month
Visibility and tracking From €32 excl. VAT per month Competitor monitoring
- Database 100 million French keywords
- Plans Rédacteur 100, Professionnel 800
- Included API, MCP, Looker Studio
- Trial 7 days, no tracked keywords
Ranxplorer first measures the visibility of any site on its French database, including paid search: you see which queries a competitor is gaining on without setting anything up. The custom keyword list in paid plans completes this monitoring, “updated continuously” according to the vendor, with no precise frequency.
The Rédacteur plan (€32 excl. VAT per month billed yearly, 100 keywords) is the cheapest way in, but Professionnel (€59 excl. VAT, 800 keywords) makes more sense once you track a whole site. The API, MCP server and Looker Studio connector are included in every plan, which is rare at this price. The trial does not let you test tracking, and the tool covers France only.
Strengths
- Competitor visibility with no setup
- API, MCP and Looker Studio included
- Cheap entry plan
Limits
- France only
- List update frequency not stated
- Trial without tracked keywords
Who it is for: Writers, freelancers and online retailers monitoring competitors on Google France.
Our take: The right tool for French competitor monitoring; less suited to day-to-day alert tracking.
France
Monitorank
Pure daily tracking, by city and on five engines, billed per keyword
Pure rank tracker Per keyword (excl. VAT) Agencies, local
- Updates Daily, top 50
- Engines Google, YouTube, Bing, Yandex, Baidu
- Local By city, local pack
- Alerts Daily email based on filters
- Free 10 keywords for life
Monitorank does only one thing, tracking, but in depth: Google web, images, videos, news and Maps, on mobile and desktop, by country and city, with the local pack, position zero and AI Overviews. Its email alerts are set with filters, for example “drop of at least 10 places”, which makes it a real alarm system.
Per-keyword billing fits your needs closely, but the amount only shows in the calculator (discounts from 2.5% quarterly to 10% yearly; top 100 instead of top 50: +30%). Unlimited competitors and history, API, Looker Studio and white-label exports are included: a strong argument for an agency. You need another tool for links and audits.
Strengths
- Fine local and multi-engine tracking
- Filter-based alerts
- White label and API included
Limits
- No backlinks, no audit
- Price only visible in calculator
- Top 100 costs extra
Who it is for: Agencies, e-commerce and local businesses that want precise tracking and alerts.
Our take: The best pure rank tracker on the list; pair it with a suite or Search Console for the rest.
Tracking a market other than France
If your site sells in Germany, Spain or Italy, your rankings on google.fr say nothing about your sales there. Before looking for a local tool, check what you really need.
When local data changes the decision
- Local index and country domain: Google ranks differently on google.de or google.it, in the country's language. The tool must query the right country and language, not translate your French rankings.
- City-level tracking: for a network of branches or stores, rankings change from one city to the next. SISTRIX claims 10,000 cities; Seobility, SE Ranking and Monitorank also track by city.
- Keyword database in the local language: volumes and suggestions must come from the target market. Haloscan and Ranxplorer cover France only; local tools know their own language better.
- Data residency and governing law: a vendor established in the European Union answers directly to the GDPR and a European authority; Semrush, SE Ranking, Ahrefs and SEObserver are established outside the EU, so data transfers must be covered if you import customer data into them.
- Currency and billing: Authoritas bills in pounds sterling, SiteGuru in dollars; the other selected tools bill in euros.
- Support language: an Italian or Spanish team will work faster with an interface and support in its own language.
The big suites already cover most markets
To track a few hundred keywords in another country from France, you don't need a local tool: SE Ranking (188 country databases), Semrush (142 databases), Ahrefs (217 locations) and Monitorank (Google by country and city) track these markets in the same account as your French keywords. It is the simplest solution for a multilingual site.
A local tool becomes useful when that market is your main market, when the team running it works in its own language, or when the market has its own benchmark metric, like the SISTRIX Visibility Index in Germany.
Germany
SISTRIX
The visibility index that serves as the benchmark in Germany
SEO suite From €119 excl. VAT per month Germany, multi-country
- Updates Daily (Optimizer projects)
- Coverage 350+ country-language pairs, 10,000 cities
- Start plan 3 projects, 2,500 SERP updates
- Trial 14 days
SISTRIX is built around its Visibility Index, which German SEO teams use to compare sites with each other. Daily tracking of your keywords runs through Optimizer projects, on desktop, mobile and tablet, on Google, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex. With more than 350 country-language combinations and 10,000 cities announced, it is the broadest local tool on this page. The Start plan (€119 excl. VAT per month) includes neither the API nor white label.
Who it is for: Sites whose main market is Germany, Austria or Switzerland.
Our take: The benchmark for German-speaking markets; an international suite is enough if Germany is secondary.
Germany
Seobility
Technical audit and daily tracking, with a free plan
Audit and tracking From €59.90 excl. VAT per month Small sites
- Updates Daily (desktop), every 3 days (mobile)
- Premium plan 300 keywords, white label
- Local Down to city level
- Free 10 keywords, 14-day trial
Seobility pairs an audit crawler with daily Google tracking on desktop, every three days on mobile. The free plan's 10 keywords are enough to monitor a home page and a few key pages, in any country. The Premium plan (€59.90 excl. VAT per month, 300 keywords, about €0.20 per keyword) costs more per keyword than Haloscan or SE Ranking, but it includes the audit and white label.
Who it is for: Small sites and freelancers who want audit and tracking in a European tool.
Our take: A good entry-level tool, especially for its free plan; mobile is not daily.
Spain
DinoRANK
The Spanish all-in-one tool, 400 daily keywords for €39 incl. VAT
SEO suite From €39 incl. VAT per month Spanish market
- Updates Daily
- Starter plan 400 keywords and audit
- Pro API and white label
- Trial None
DinoRANK targets Spanish-speaking teams: daily tracking, audits and analysis of your own links, with a price shown including VAT (€39 per month, €390 per year), about €0.10 per keyword. With no free trial, you have to pay for a month to judge it, and the vendor does not specify the countries covered: for Latin America, check before committing.
Who it is for: Spanish teams and freelancers whose main market is Spain.
Our take: Good value for the Spanish market; test it for a month before going annual.
Italy
SEOZoom
The Italian suite, with databases in five countries
SEO suite From €69 excl. VAT per month Italian market
- Updates Every 48 hours
- Essential plan 100 keywords
- Databases Italy, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Germany
- Trial 7 days
SEOZoom is the go-to suite for anyone working in Italian: its Italian keyword database is its strong point, and it also covers four other European countries. Project tracking is updated every 48 hours, not daily, and the Essential plan (€69 excl. VAT per month, €56 billed yearly) tracks only 100 keywords, about €0.69 per keyword. API and white label start with the Evolution plan.
Who it is for: Italian teams and sites whose main market is Italy.
Our take: For Italian keyword research more than for tracking, which stays slow and costly per keyword.
Netherlands
SiteGuru
Audit and 2,500 daily keywords per site, six-week trial
Audit and tracking From $49 per month Small agencies
- Updates Daily, weekly audit
- Quota 2,500 keywords per site
- Reports White label
- Trial 6 weeks, no card
SiteGuru includes 2,500 keywords tracked daily per site from the Small plan ($49 per month), a rare quota at this price, with a weekly audit and white-label reports. It has no classic API (it offers an MCP server and webhooks) and its link monitoring is partial. Billing in dollars and a six-week trial with no card make it a tool to test before SE Ranking for a small portfolio of sites.
Who it is for: Dutch freelancers and small agencies, or any site that wants a large quota for a fixed price.
Our take: The most generous per-site quota among local tools; little market data.
United Kingdom
Authoritas
Google and Bing rankings, plus visibility in AI assistants
SEO and AI suite From £99 per month UK, AI tracking
- Updates Daily, weekly or monthly
- Essential plan 15,000 credits per month
- AI tracked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini
- Free 1,000 credits, 2 domains
Authoritas runs on credits (15,000 per month in the Essential plan, £99) and offers daily, weekly or monthly tracking on Google and Bing, with audits and backlinks. It also tracks answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, a bridge to AI visibility tracking, which we compare in the best GEO tracking tools. Billing in pounds sterling; API reserved for the Enterprise plan.
Who it is for: UK sites and teams that want to track Google and AI assistants in one place.
Our take: Interesting for its free plan and AI tracking; the credit system takes some math.
Local tools we don't recommend
- Pi Datametrics (United Kingdom): enterprise plans, prices only after a demo.
- XOVI (Germany): weekly tracking only, with no advantage over SISTRIX or Seobility.
- TrueRanker (Spain): close to DinoRANK, billed in dollars, with no feature an international suite doesn't already offer.
- SEO Tester Online (Italy): 25 keywords updated weekly in the entry plan.
- MarketingTracer (Netherlands): 100 keywords per site and update frequency not published.
For Portugal and Brazil, we selected no local tool: no rank tracker is made in Portugal, and the Brazilian tools we found do not name the company behind them. Use an international suite, after checking that the country is in its list of databases.
How to choose your rank tracking tool
- If your budget is zero: Search Console, plus the 10 free-for-life keywords from Monitorank or the free plan from Seobility, because you get Google's real data and light daily tracking of your key pages.
- If your revenue depends on Google: daily tracking with alerts, SE Ranking, Semrush or Monitorank, because being a week late on a drop costs you sales.
- If you track more than 1,000 keywords: SE Ranking, because its cost per daily keyword is the lowest in this comparison.
- If you live off content and links: Ahrefs or SEObserver, because weekly tracking is enough and link analysis makes the difference.
- If you only target Google France: Haloscan for tracking, Ranxplorer for competitor monitoring, because their French databases cost less than the suites.
- If you are an agency: Monitorank (white label included) or SE Ranking with the Agency Pack, because client reports must carry your brand.
- If you have physical stores: Monitorank or SE Ranking, because they track each city and the local pack.
- If you target another country: see Tracking another market; an international suite is usually enough.
Mistakes that skew tracking
- Comparing two tools with each other: each queries Google at a different time and from a different place. Compare a tool with itself over time.
- Choosing keywords by volume: track queries that match a search intent that pays off for you (purchase, quote, sign-up), not just the most searched ones.
- Tracking desktop only: if most of your traffic is mobile (Search Console tells you), track at least your key pages on mobile.
- Trusting estimated traffic: visibility and estimated traffic are each tool's own calculations. Only Search Console measures clicks.
- Paying for a year without a trial: SE Ranking, Semrush, Ranxplorer, SISTRIX and SiteGuru offer a trial; SEObserver and DinoRANK don't.
Ranking drop: hack, technical error or Google update?
Your rank tracker is also an alarm. When several keywords slip on the same day, the cause almost always falls into one of three families. Telling them apart quickly saves you weeks fixing the wrong problem.
A hacked site loses its rankings
- Injected SEO spam: thousands of pages in Japanese, or about pharmacy or gambling, show up in
site:yoursite, sometimes with an unknown owner added in Search Console. - Cloaking: spam pages are shown only to Googlebot; you see nothing when visiting the site, but Search Console's URL Inspection reveals them.
- Malicious redirects: visitors coming from Google are sent to another site.
- Warnings: the “This site may be hacked” label or a Safe Browsing warning page cuts clicks even before rankings.
The signs to check are detailed in is my WordPress site hacked?; cleanup, reindexing and the reconsideration request in hacked WordPress site and SEO and site flagged as dangerous by Google.
A technical error after an update
An updated caching or SEO plugin, or theme, can add a noindex, change robots.txt, remove pages from the XML sitemap or cause 5xx errors. The drop then starts on the day of the update and hits a specific type of page. Search Console's “Page indexing” report and an update log let you connect the two. Repeated 5xx errors also often come from hosting: see our WordPress hosting ranking.
A Google update or manual action
A manual action appears in the “Manual actions” report. Ranking updates (core updates, spam updates) are announced on the Google Search Status Dashboard: if the drop coincides with a rollout date, also hits your competitors, and no security or indexing issue shows up, that is probably the cause. Nothing can be fixed in a hurry then: you need to improve your content.
What a ranking drop costs
Loss ≈ organic clicks lost per month × conversion rate × average conversion value × number of months before rankings recover.
Example, with assumptions to replace with your own figures: a store gets 3,000 organic clicks per month on its categories; a hack makes it lose 40%, or 1,200 clicks per month, for 2 months; with a 2% conversion rate and an average order of €60, the loss reaches 1,200 × 0.02 × 60 × 2 = €2,880 in revenue, before the cost of cleanup. The other cost items are detailed in what a hacked site costs, compared with prevention.
WP Masquerade: protect the rankings you track
A rank tracker spots a drop; it doesn't tell you what changed on your site. WP Masquerade, our WordPress security plugin, covers that side. It is neither an antivirus nor a firewall: it reduces what attack bots can see, locks down login and warns you early.
Security: spot a hack before Google does
WP Masquerade Pro checks your plugins and themes daily against known vulnerabilities and core files against official checksums (integrity check), then sends you email alerts. A file modified the day before a drop points straight to a hack. To clean an already infected site, follow the step-by-step procedure.
Durability: link a drop to a change
The administrator activity log records installed plugins, created accounts, settings and updates. Facing a drop, you see whether it follows an update (technical error) or an unknown administrator account (hack). For an agency, the member area lists every day, site by site, pending updates and known vulnerabilities.
SEO: hide WordPress without losing traffic
Hiding WordPress changes neither your permalinks, nor the canonical tag, nor the title tag, meta description or sitemap of your content. Only the highest alias level can cost Google Images traffic: the real effects of hiding on SEO, setting by setting, and the procedure that protects your rankings.
GEO: keep your brand clean in AI answers
Answer engines and AI Overviews draw on indexed pages. Spam pages injected under your domain can therefore stay associated with your brand long after cleanup. Detecting a hack early limits this contamination; to measure your presence in AI answers, see the GEO tracking tools and our comparison of WordPress security plugins.
WP Masquerade Pro costs €59 per year for 1 site, €149 for 10, €399 for 100, or €990 lifetime for unlimited sites (see pricing). The free version, Masquerade Security, can be downloaded from our site.
Methodology
- Selection: five tools present on the French-speaking market (Semrush, Ahrefs, SEObserver, Haloscan, Ranxplorer), Google Search Console as the free benchmark, two well-documented tools on the French market (SE Ranking, Monitorank), then tools from other European countries, kept only if they bring something an international suite doesn't.
- Criteria, the same for all: tracking frequency, keywords tracked in the entry plan and cost per keyword, mobile and local tracking, countries covered, backlinks, audit, API, white label, price, free version or trial.
- Order of presentation: the free benchmark, international suites, French tools, then local tools by market. This is not a scored ranking: we did not measure ranking accuracy, speed or support quality, and we have no account with any of these tools (the screenshots show their public home page).
- Sources: vendors' official pages and Google's help. Database sizes are those announced by vendors; cost per keyword is our calculation from published prices.
- Excluded: Myposeo (end of service announced), Babbar (link analysis without rank tracking), Searchmetrics (merged into Conductor), SEOmonitor (headquarters not verified), SEOcrawl (company in Andorra), Searchfy and SEO Monitor (publishing company not disclosed), as well as the local tools listed above.
- No compensation: no vendor pays to appear here or for its position, and no link is an affiliate link. This information meets French transparency requirements for online rankings (article L111-7 of the French Consumer Code, specified by article D111-7).
- Updates: spotted an error or a price change? Write to us and we will fix it.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free rank tracking tool?
Google Search Console: it is free and reports the rankings Google actually observed, as an average and with a 2 to 3 day delay. For light daily tracking of chosen keywords, Monitorank offers 10 keywords for life and Seobility 10 keywords in its free plan.
Why do my rankings differ between a tool and Search Console?
Because they don't measure the same thing. A tool queries Google at one moment, from a given location and device; Search Console averages every position where your site appeared for real users, everywhere.
Do I need daily or weekly tracking?
Daily if your site sells or lives off its traffic, weekly for a content site. Daily tracking shortens the time between the start of a problem, such as a hack or an update error, and the moment you see it.
How much does tracking one keyword cost?
Between €0.05 and €0.66 per keyword per month for the eight main tools in this comparison. SE Ranking is the cheapest for daily tracking (2,000 keywords for €109), SEObserver the most expensive (150 keywords for €99).
Do AI Overviews skew rank tracking?
They don't change your rank, but they can reduce your clicks. Choose a tool that flags AI Overviews (Semrush, Monitorank) and follow clicks in Search Console to see whether a stable position still brings traffic.
How do I track rankings in a specific city?
With a tool that queries Google from that city: Monitorank and SE Ranking track by city, Semrush and Ahrefs down to ZIP code. Search Console only gives an average per country.
Can a hack make my rankings drop?
Yes. Injected spam pages, cloaking or malicious redirects lead to a warning in search results, a manual action or pages being deindexed. Check Search Console's “Security issues” report and read our guide on SEO for a hacked WordPress site.
Do these tools protect my site?
No: they show the effects of a problem on your visibility. Protection happens in WordPress and on the server (updates, protected login, file monitoring); our comparison of WordPress security plugins presents the options.
Sources and method
Information collected from each publisher’s official pages (homepage, pricing, features, terms, legal notice). Search Console limits (average position, data delay, 16 months of history) and security reports come from the official Google Search Console Help. Costs per keyword are our calculations from published prices. Criteria and absence of payment: see the methodology (article L111-7 of the French Consumer Code, specified by article D111-7).
The brands mentioned belong to their respective owners; they are used only to identify the tools compared. The screenshots show the vendors' public home pages.