Find answers to common questions about RankCause. Can't find what you need? Create a support ticket.
Navigate to Domains from the sidebar, then click "+ Add Domain". Enter your website's domain name (e.g., example.com). Once added, you can start adding individual pages to track, or use the Sitemap Import feature to automatically discover and add all your URLs.
After adding pages, click "Crawl All Pages" to take your first snapshot. The system will begin tracking changes from this point forward.
Our system periodically crawls each tracked page and takes a "snapshot" of its SEO-critical elements. These include:
Each new snapshot is compared against the previous one. Any differences are logged in the Change Log with a severity rating and optional alert notification.
By default, pages are crawled once every 24 hours. The system checks for due crawls every 30 minutes and processes them in batches to keep server load low.
Admins can configure crawl frequency per user from the Admin Panel, including options for every 6, 12, 24, or 48 hours. You can also trigger manual crawls at any time by clicking the "Crawl" button on any page or domain.
We track over 20 on-page SEO elements including:
Each element change generates a log entry with the old and new values so you can see exactly what changed.
Alerts are triggered when any monitored element changes between snapshots. The system classifies changes by severity:
You can also create Custom Alert Rules from the Alerts page to define your own conditions.
Yes. On the page detail view, each change entry has an annotation dropdown where you can tag it as:
You can also add a text note for additional context. This helps your team distinguish between planned updates and unexpected changes.
Go to the Page Detail view and click the "Compare" tab. You'll see a side-by-side diff of any two snapshots. The diff highlights additions in green and removals in red, making it easy to spot exactly what changed between any two crawl dates.
The Page Health Score is a 0–100 composite metric that evaluates your page's SEO health based on:
The score is tracked over time so you can see trends — a declining health score often predicts future ranking drops.
When we detect a page change and you have ranking data connected (via Google Search Console), the system automatically correlates the timing of changes with ranking movements. For example, if your title tag changed on March 5 and your rankings dropped on March 8, the system will flag this as a potential correlation.
This helps you answer the question: "Did this page change cause my ranking to drop?"
Go to Settings and enter your Google OAuth credentials (Client ID and Secret). Then navigate to any domain's detail page and click "Connect GSC". You'll be redirected to Google to authorize access. Once connected, ranking and impression data will sync automatically.
You need to set up OAuth credentials in the Google Cloud Console first. Our Settings page has step-by-step instructions.
The same Google OAuth credentials used for Search Console also work for GA4. After entering them in Settings, go to your domain's detail page and click "Connect GA4". Select your GA4 property and authorize access. Traffic data (sessions, users, bounce rate) will then appear in your Reports section.
Navigate to the Competitors section from the sidebar. Click "+ Add Competitor" and enter the competitor's URL and the keyword you want to track them for. The system will begin monitoring their page for changes just like it monitors your own pages.
Remember that competitor pages count toward your plan's total page limit.
We track the same elements on competitor pages as on your own: title tags, meta descriptions, headings, word count, internal links, and schema markup. When a competitor makes a change, you'll receive an alert so you can respond proactively — whether they're optimizing content, changing their targeting, or restructuring their pages.
All plans include a 48-hour free trial. No credit card required to start.
Go to Billing from the sidebar. You'll see all available plans and can switch between them instantly. Upgrades take effect immediately with prorated billing. Downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing period.
You can cancel anytime from the Billing page. Your access continues until the end of the current billing period. Your data is retained for 30 days after cancellation, giving you time to export anything you need.
Yes. All data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS/TLS). Passwords are hashed using bcrypt and never stored in plain text. API keys and OAuth credentials are stored securely in the application database. We do not share your data with third parties.
Yes. The admin can configure crawl frequency per user from the Admin Panel. Available intervals include every 6, 12, 24, or 48 hours. You can also set maximum pages per crawl and delay between page requests to avoid overloading target servers.
Available on Growth, Pro, and Enterprise plans. When a change is detected, you can click "Explain with AI" on any change log entry. The system uses Claude AI to analyze the change and explain its potential SEO impact in plain language — for example, "The title tag was shortened from 65 to 42 characters, which may improve click-through rate but could reduce keyword targeting."
Explanations are generated on-demand (not automatically) to keep costs low, and are cached so you only generate them once per change.
Available on the Pro and Enterprise plans. Go to Settings → Webhook Endpoints to add a webhook URL. You can configure which events trigger webhooks (alerts, crawl completions, change detections). Each webhook delivery is signed with HMAC-SHA256 if you provide a secret, and all deliveries are logged so you can troubleshoot failures.
Common use cases: push alerts to Slack, trigger Zapier automations, or send notifications to your own monitoring systems.
You can export your data as CSV files from several places:
CSV exports include all relevant columns (URL, title, SEO score, change dates, etc.) and can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, or any spreadsheet application.