SMF·ACCURANKER
Can a prompt replace AccuRanker?
SEO & marketing — keyword research, backlinks and rank tracking
Exhibit tracking slip
Verdict
Tracking your own list of keywords — check position daily via a SERP API, store history, chart the trend — is a real weekend build once you accept you need a SERP API for the actual Google data (scraping Google directly gets blocked fast, and that's not a personal project worth attempting). What doesn't survive: AccuRanker's actual selling point, raw tracking speed and reliability at thousands of keywords across many client accounts, and its historical SERP-feature detection depth.
Exhibit A — The prompt
Received on31.07.2026Build a personal keyword rank tracker for a fixed list of keywords you choose — not a general SEO platform. Use a SERP API service (e.g. a pay-as-you-go provider like SerpApi or ValueSerp) rather than scraping Google directly, since direct scraping gets blocked quickly and isn't a viable personal-project approach. Use Python or Node with a scheduled daily job (cron or a simple scheduler) that queries the SERP API for each keyword's current ranking position for your domain, and stores the result in SQLite with the date. Build a simple dashboard: a table of current positions, and a line chart of each keyword's position history over the last 90 days. Add a basic alert (email or a written log line) when a keyword moves more than a set number of positions in a day. Store the SERP API key in an environment variable. Do not build competitor tracking, SERP-feature detection (featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes), or white-label client reporting — those are out of scope; this tracks your own keywords for your own domain, nothing more. Needs hosting for the scheduled job, a small database, and a SERP API subscription — expect a modest per-query cost from the API provider, separate from this build itself.Opening prefills the prompt — press enter to run it.
Exhibit B — What you lose
- B.1 speed and reliability at thousands of keywords
- B.2 SERP-feature and competitor tracking depth
- B.3 white-label client reporting
- B.4 years of SERP-parsing edge cases
Prior art
Exhibit C — Why people still pay: proprietary web index and data acquisition
Checking ten keywords is a script; checking thousands, daily, across many clients, without ever silently missing a day, is an operations problem — and that reliability is what agencies actually pay for.
Questions
Does this scrape Google directly?
No — it queries a paid SERP API instead. Scraping Google directly at any real frequency gets IP-blocked fast, and building around that is not a realistic personal project.
How much does the SERP API itself cost?
Separate from hosting — expect a small per-query fee from whichever SERP API provider you pick, usually a few cents per keyword check, which adds up with more keywords or more frequent checks.
Can I track competitor rankings too?
Not in this build — it's scoped to your own domain's rankings for your own keyword list. Competitor tracking is real additional scope this prompt skips.
Will it catch SERP features like featured snippets?
No — it tracks position only, not which SERP features appear. That detection layer is part of what AccuRanker's subscription is actually paying for.
Related tools
Receipt