RankNest

Client Overview: Dashboard Tour

A walk through the client overview: search and analytics KPIs, the tools grid, tasks, recent activity, and review banners.

The client overview is the first page you land on when you open a client. It summarizes everything happening on that account in one place: Search Console and Analytics performance for the last 30 days, a live summary cell for each tool, your open tasks, and a feed of recent activity. Once a client has data flowing, this is the page you check before every client call.

Where to find it

Open a client from the Clients list, or click Overview at the top of the client sidebar. Every section has an empty state with a connect or start link, and cards fill in as you connect integrations and run tools.

Review banners

One of two banners can appear above the page header. Both relate to pages RankNest detected that aren't organized in your link map yet. Only one shows at a time; the second is a fallback for when there is nothing to approve.

  • N new pages detected and categorized. RankNest found new pages and suggested a topic cluster for each one, sometimes including new clusters. Nothing is applied to your link map until you approve, so click Review N pages to accept or reject each suggestion.
  • N new pages discovered from Google Search Console. The fallback when pages were found but no cluster suggestion is available. These pages were added to your link map as ungrouped pages. Click View in Link Map to assign them to clusters yourself, or dismiss the banner with the X.

See Crawling Your Site for how pages get into the link map in the first place.

Search performance (Search Console)

The first KPI row shows this client's Google Search Console data for the last 30 days:

  • Avg. Ranking Position, with a daily sparkline. Lower is better, and the trend arrow accounts for that: a green arrow means the position number went down.
  • Clicks, Impressions, and CTR, each with a change indicator against the previous 30 days. Green means the metric improved, red means it declined. Click and impression changes show as percentages; CTR shows as a percentage-point change.

The position card also shows when the data last synced. Numbers refresh nightly, so expect them to trail the Search Console interface by up to a day.

If Search Console isn't connected for this client, the row is replaced by a Connect GSC link that takes you to the client's settings. See Google Search Console for the connection steps.

Site analytics (Google Analytics)

The second KPI row shows Google Analytics 4 data for the last 30 days:

  • Engaged Sessions: the leading traffic number, with total sessions shown underneath. Engaged sessions filter out visits that bounce immediately, which makes them a more honest traffic figure than raw sessions when a site attracts bot traffic. If the row leads with Sessions instead, engaged-session data hasn't synced for this client yet.
  • Engagement Rate
  • Key Events: the actions you've marked as key events in GA4, such as form submissions or calls. If the count looks off for the amount of traffic the site gets, the card shows a Check key event setup link to the client's settings, where you can review which GA4 key events are selected.
  • Avg. Session Duration

If Google Analytics isn't connected, the row shows a Connect Google Analytics link. GA4 is connected once for your whole agency and then assigned to clients, so this link goes to your agency settings rather than the client's. See Google Analytics 4.

Performance Breakdown

Below the KPI rows, the Performance Breakdown card splits Search Console clicks for the last 30 days by a single dimension. Switch between four tabs:

  • Device: desktop, mobile, tablet.
  • Country: top countries by clicks.
  • Appearance: how results appeared in search (rich results, AMP, and so on).
  • Discover: Google Discover traffic by country. Most sites never surface in Discover, so "No Discover data for this property" is normal.

Each row shows a click bar plus impressions (Impr.), CTR, and average position (Pos.). The card lists the top eight rows per tab.

Tasks

The Tasks card groups this client's open tasks into three buckets: Overdue, This week, and Upcoming. Each bucket shows up to four tasks with due dates, then a "+N more" line. The card mixes tasks you created yourself with tasks RankNest creates from feature work, such as linking recommendations you've queued.

The task panel

Click View all tasks to open the full task panel, a slide-out with four collapsible groups: Overdue, This Week, Upcoming, and Completed. Each task shows its source feature (General, SEO Testing, Linking Plan, and so on) and its due date, plus three actions:

  • View jumps to the feature the task came from, for example the test in SEO Testing or the recommendation in the Linking Plan.
  • Done marks the task complete.
  • Hide removes the task from your view without completing or deleting it. Hidden tasks stay retrievable: a Show N hidden toggle appears in the panel header, and each hidden task gets an Unhide action.

Add a task

  1. Open the task panel and click Add task (or Add first task if the list is empty).
  2. Fill in the Add New Task form: Task Title (required), Description, Client, Task Type, Priority, and Due Date.
  3. Click Add Task. The new task appears in the bucket that matches its due date.

The Tools grid

The Tools card is a six-cell grid, one cell per feature, each with a headline number, a small visualization, and an Open link to the full feature:

  • SEO Testing: tests currently running, a tests-per-month bar chart for the last 12 months, tests completed this month, and the average position gain across completed tests. See SEO Testing.
  • Link Mapping: new (pending) linking recommendations, a progress bar of linked vs. total pages, the current orphan count, and when the map was last updated. See Link Mapping and the Linking Plan.
  • Message Mining: total messages mined, a monthly bar chart, how many arrived in the last day, and the campaign count. See Message Mining.
  • Issues: pages covered by the latest Site Audit crawl, average response time, warning count, indexable page count, and the last crawl date. Opens the unified Issues view.
  • Content Mapping: competitor pages scraped, a progress bar of completed projects, and how many are still in progress. See Content Mapping.
  • GBP Posts: posts scheduled this month, a day-by-day calendar of the current month (blue chips are scheduled, green are published), the published count, and the next scheduled date. See GBP Management.

Recent activity

Next to the Tools grid, the Recent activity panel is a chronological feed of the latest events on this client: tests created or completed, crawls, content batches, tasks, and posts. Each entry has a colored dot for its source, a relative timestamp, and, where it applies, a link straight to the item.

Tips

  • A large gap between Engaged Sessions and total sessions is worth investigating. It often means bot traffic is inflating the raw session count.
  • The Issues cell headline is a page count from the latest crawl, not an issue count. Open it to see the ranked issue list.
  • Hiding a task is per-browser. Your teammates still see tasks you've hidden.

Troubleshooting

The KPI row shows "Connect GSC" but I already connected Search Console. The connection is per client. Open the client's settings and confirm a property is assigned to this client; see Google Search Console.

KPI values show a dash instead of a number. The integration is connected but hasn't completed its first sync yet. Data appears after the next nightly refresh.

Key Events shows 0 with real traffic. This usually points to the GA4 key event configuration, not a tracking outage. Follow the Check key event setup link on the card and review the selected key events; see Google Analytics 4.

A review banner keeps coming back. The banner reflects pages still waiting for review. Approve or reject each suggestion in the review dialog; dismissing the discovery banner only hides it until new pages are found.

Last updated 2026-07-25