Missing rank data

Symptoms

• Keywords you added show no position at all.
• Rankings that used to appear are now blank.
• Some days are missing from a keyword’s history chart.
• Positions in VisibilityIQ don’t match what you see in Google manually.

Rank data comes from two sources: Google Search Console (impression-backed positions for queries your site already appears for) and VisibilityIQ’s rank-tracking service, which pulls positions directly. The rank-tracking service is included in your plan — there’s no key to configure. It is governed by a monthly data budget, and if that budget is exhausted or no sync has run yet, only GSC-derived data appears.

Likely causes

• Monthly data budget exhausted. Every sync enforces the monthly data budget before pulling positions and aborts with quota_exceeded once the budget is reached. No further keywords sync until the budget resets or you raise it. Until then, only GSC-derived data appears.
• Position outside the top 100. Positions greater than 100 are never synced — there is no rank to report once you fall outside Google’s first 100 results.
• Sync hasn’t run yet. New keywords appear within 24 hours; a scheduled sync (default cadence: weekly) may simply not have run.
• Wrong database/region. The rank-tracking service queries a specific regional database (for example us, uk). Keywords tracked in the wrong database return nothing.
• No GSC impression history. GSC won’t return queries with zero impressions in the trailing 16 months.

How to fix it

1. Confirm the data budget. In the rank-tracking settings, verify the monthly data budget has remaining capacity. If a recent sync logged quota_exceeded, raise the budget or wait for the monthly reset, then re-run the sync. There’s no API key to check — the rank-tracking service is included in your plan.
2. Check the sync log. Each sync records start time, budget consumed, keywords synced, and final status. A running status means a sync is in progress — only one runs per project at a time, so wait for it to finish rather than starting another.
3. Verify the target position. Confirm your domain actually ranks in the top 100 for the keyword. If you’ve dropped below 100, the keyword goes blank by design — check the history chart for the drop.
4. Match the database/region. Make sure each keyword is tracked against the correct regional database for the market you care about.
5. Confirm GSC is connected. Most impression-backed data flows through GSC. If the connector shows an error in Settings → Connectors, reconnect it; historical data backfills on the next sync.

Gaps and discrepancies

Blank days in daily history are usually GSC sampling and privacy thresholds — low-impression queries drop out of the API response on a given day. The 7-day and 30-day averages smooth this. Manual-vs-reported mismatches come from personalisation, location, device, and time-of-day variation; GSC uses country-level aggregated, non-personalised data. For a neutral manual check, search incognito, signed out, with location set to your target country.

Still stuck?

If a keyword ranks in the top 100, the connector has budget, and data still doesn’t appear after 48 hours, email support@visibilityiq365.com with the keyword, domain, and database. See also Connector auth errors and Audit shows no issues or empty results.