Advice and answers from the Advanced Web Ranking Team
Keyword Units and Update Types Explained
Learn how keyword units work in Advanced Web Ranking, how different update types consume resources, and how to track unit usage across your projects.
What are keyword units?
Each subscription uses 'weekly keyword units' as its primary resource. Each plan includes a given number of keyword units, calculated considering the volume of ranking updates.
The number of weekly keyword units included in each plan is allocated to 1 billing month.
1 keyword unit means 1 keyword updated weekly, on 1 search engine, with a search depth of up to 5 pages.
Overview of Update Types
In AWR, you can run different types of updates depending on the data you need for your SEO analysis. Each type of update consumes resources differently, so it’s important to understand how units are calculated for each.
Let’s go through all the types of updates.
Ranking Updates
AWR relies entirely on real data gathering. We do not use databases or third-party applications. Instead, we send live keyword queries to the search engines you’ve selected for your project and we display the actual ranking positions returned by the selected search engine at the time of the update.
The number of units required for a ranking update is computed using the following factors:
number of actual keywords to be updated
number of search engines added to the project
update frequency or update type (scheduled vs on-demand) selected.
depth of search (the number of search result pages retrieved for each keyword)
Each search engine location and device added to the project is counted as a separate SE unit (e.g., Google Desktop + Google Mobile equals 2 search engine units).
The Google Search + AIO and Google AI Mode search engines use a more advanced query mechanism to gather data accurately, consuming twice the resources of standard search engines.
Tracking ChatGPT and Perplexity uses keyword units just like any standard search engine (e.g Google, Yahoo, Bing etc.).
For a search depth of 1, 2, 3, or 5 pages, 1 unit is required for each keyword and search engine combination. A search depth of 10 pages requires 2 units.
What is the difference between manual and scheduled ranking updates?
Scheduled ranking updates are running automatically at a predefined frequency, based on the schedule you select for the project.
When updating a project on the scheduler, the application automatically reserves the keyword units required for a month's worth of updates:
for daily scheduled projects, a ranking update will be completed each day
for weekly, 4 updates will take place
for biweekly, 2 updates will be completed
for monthly, 1 update will take place.
Manual ranking updates can be triggered from your account at any time. These updates can either be partial (impacting specific keywords or search engines)
or applied to the entire project (1-hour, 12-hour, or 48-hour on-demand options).
Partial updates
For each keyword & search engine pair needing refreshed rankings, 0.5 keyword units are required. As the number of keywords and/or search engines increases, the number of units needed for a partial update also increases.
The Partial Update modal will display the number of units required for each partial update from the total available.
On-demand updates
The resources required for on-demand updates vary depending on the type of update requested:
1-hour: same amount of resources as a weekly ranking update.
12-hour: half the resources of a weekly ranking update.
48-hour: one quarter of the resources of a weekly ranking update.
The number of units required for each type update is displayed in the Run on demand update wizard.
When running a partial or an on-demand update, the application immediately consumes the resources for that one-time update.
Scheduled on-demand updates
If scheduled updates or manual data retrievals don’t fit your workflow, you can set scheduled on-demand ranking updates to run at specific times that match your reporting needs, as frequently as required.
You can set the scheduled on-demand update to run once at a specific date and time or follow a recurring schedule.
This feature runs a 12-hour update and allows the consumption of up to 5,000 keyword units per update.
You can view the number of units required by the scheduled on-demand update in the Schedule on-demand wizard, based on the settings you select.
Difficulty Updates
While ranking updates are used to retrieve your keywords’ position on SERPs, difficulty updates assess how challenging it would be for your website to rank in the top 10 positions for the set of keywords you are tracking.
Similar to ranking updates, running difficulty updates requires units from your subscription's available resources, as follows:
Difficulty updates can either be scheduled or triggered manually. Depending on the type of update - scheduled or on-demand - the units are either reserved or replenished when the billing cycle refreshes, just like with ranking updates.
AI Brand Visibility Updates
The AI Brand Visibility updates allow you to analyze the topics most often associated with your brand’s niche, who else is getting mentioned alongside you, which websites and publications refer to your brand and how often, as well as how visible or relevant your brand appears across four of the most widely used AI search engines: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini.
The number of units required for AI Brand Visibility updates depends on the following factors:
the number of tracked LLMs
the number of tracked topics
the selected update frequency
whether Web Search Mode is enabled.
By default, the AI Brand Visibility updates use Web Search Mode, which tells the selected LLM to validate its responses using live web search data rather than relying solely on its pre-trained knowledge.
Since training data can be months or even years old, disabling web grounding may result in outdated brand mentions, missing recent references, or less relevant associations.
Resource consumption is calculated as follows:
With Grounding with web search option enabled
With Grounding with web search disabled
The available update frequency options for AI Brand Visibility are:
Daily -> 30 updates
Weekly -> 4 updates
Biweekly -> 2 updates
Monthly -> 1 update
The number of units required for the AI Brand Visibility updates is displayed in the Update Settings wizard.
If you prefer not to schedule Brand Visibility updates to run regularly, or if you need fresh data between scheduled runs, you can trigger an on-demand update at any time by clicking the Start on demand update button in any of the Brand Visibility reports.
On-demand updates consume keyword units using the same calculation formula, applied to a single update, and the required units are shown in the modal.
How to Check Your Account’s Keyword Unit Consumption
The Resources section provides an overview of how many keyword units each project update requires, split by update types.
By expanding a project, you can also view a detailed breakdown showing how the unit consumption is calculated for that project.
Do you have any other questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch and we will keep building the FAQ.
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