Interpret history, tracking position, and signal lenses

Read monthly history as stored provider evidence

The history chart switches among organic traffic, organic keyword count, and paid traffic. The current controls show the latest 6, 12, or 24 months. A point is omitted when its value is missing, and the line does not connect across null values.

Look for sustained direction, inflection points, and recovery patterns. Do not call one visible step an algorithm effect, migration result, or campaign outcome without independent dated evidence.

History does not come from repeated Crawl Foundry runs

Monthly rows are stored with the base Domain Overview snapshot and read in a bounded series. The comparison request normally asks for up to 24 months, while the read model can support a longer stored series. Reopening the chart does not refresh those months.

The interface initially shows up to 8 domains and enforces the current display limit, with at least one visible series. Hiding a line changes the chart view only. It does not remove the domain or alter the saved comparison.

A gap in a line is not zero traffic

Rows with an invalid year or a missing selected metric are skipped. The chart uses the remaining month keys across domains and keeps nulls disconnected. A shorter line can therefore reflect unavailable history rather than a younger site or a measured drop to zero.

Compare the history module status and fetched time for each domain before judging asymmetry between series.

The market map uses the tracked keyword set

The map is built from current Position Tracking evidence rather than the paid comparison history. Its horizontal position is the number of tracked keywords for which the domain has a current rank. Its vertical position is the average of those ranking positions, with a better average plotted higher. Bubble size follows the visibility index.

Visibility is CTR-weighted over the whole tracked set. Position 1 contributes the most, positions 2 through 10 contribute according to the shared curve, and ranks beyond 10 contribute zero to visibility. A domain without a usable average or any ranked keyword is omitted from the map.

The map and paid comparison can describe different scopes

Competitor map rows are compared over the same tracked workspace keywords, using the own keyword volumes for traffic estimates. A paid comparison describes provider snapshots in its saved country, language, and depth. The active tracked competitor set can also have changed since the comparison was created.

Use the map to ask who currently owns the tracked set. Use the saved comparison to ask what the provider snapshot measured in its frozen context. Agreement is useful; disagreement is a reason to inspect scope and dates.

Choose a signal lens that matches the question

Ranking and momentum charts use absolute provider counts

Ranking groups combine positions 1 to 3, 4 to 10, 11 to 20, 21 to 50, and 51 to 100 from stored provider counters. Momentum keeps new and improved counts positive and plots declined and lost counts below zero.

The bars are not normalized shares. A domain with a much larger measured keyword universe can dominate the chart even when its distribution is less efficient. A stored snapshot with absent subfields can also render zero-valued buckets, so inspect module coverage before treating zero as measured absence.

Deep intent and difficulty are sampled profiles

Deep reads a bounded set of ranked-keyword rows. The current read allows at most 1,000 rows per domain and 3,000 rows across all comparison references, dividing that total across the selected domains. Missing snapshots are omitted.

Intent is counted as informational, commercial, transactional, navigational, or other. Difficulty up to 30 is easy, up to 60 is medium, and anything higher is hard. The average uses only finite available difficulty values. Always carry the sampled-keyword count with these distributions.

Link views describe stored link fields

The comparison lens displays follow, nofollow, and referring-domain counts. The Statistics view can also show follow share, spam score, and broken backlink counts when those fields are present.

These values describe the snapshot, not link quality in a universal sense. They do not establish topical relevance, editorial merit, acquisition feasibility, or causation. Missing link fields can suppress a card or become zero in a signal series, so coverage remains part of the reading.

Statistics cards are explicit transformations

Share of voice is each visible domain's organic ETV divided by the sum of positive ETV across the compared domains. The strength radar scales authority, traffic, keywords, backlinks, and referring domains against the largest visible value for each metric and shows at most five domains. The efficiency chart plots keyword count against organic ETV, sizes the point by authority, and reports ETV per keyword.

These views make relative shape easier to see. They are not additional provider measurements, market-wide share, or performance guarantees. Changing the selected domains changes the denominator and the normalization.

The verdict is a deterministic observation

The current verdict counts whether a competitor is materially ahead on organic traffic, organic keyword count, backlink rank, or net keyword momentum. A lead is material when the competitor is at least 1.2 times the own-domain value; when the own value is zero, any positive competitor value qualifies.

The focus follows the first lead found in traffic, keywords, authority, then momentum. Ties are alphabetical, and a balanced result can still name the first competitor. The verdict does not consider conversion, business relevance, search intent, gap quality, profitability, or first-party outcomes. Treat it as a reproducible summary sentence, not strategy.

The CSV is a bounded headline and history export

The comparison CSV exports domain identity, kind, status, observation time, headline metrics, and monthly history. Headline rows currently include authority, organic traffic, organic keywords, backlinks, referring domains, and paid traffic. History rows include organic traffic, organic keywords, and paid traffic.

It does not include the gap aggregate, per-domain gap rows, top pages, signal profiles, derived cards, or every coverage field. It also omits the on-screen traffic-value metric. Preserve the comparison identifier and coverage notes beside the file if it is used outside Crawl Foundry.

A signal review should survive a second reader

• History metric, time window, visible domains, and missing months are recorded.
• Tracked-map evidence is not presented as paid snapshot history.
• Absolute counts are not mistaken for percentages or complete-domain coverage.
• Deep intent and difficulty claims include the sampled-keyword count.
• Derived shares and normalized charts name their denominator or comparison set.
• The verdict and CSV limitations remain attached to any exported conclusion.