⚠️ This article contains information about Hybrid Tracking and OTR behaviour. As projects migrate to Consistent Tracking and Enhanced Tracking, OTR will no longer be used. Maintain Continuous History will remain available and will only affect historical chart visualization.
What it is
Maintain Continuous History controls how historical ranking charts display gaps in ranking data.
It does not change how rankings are collected, stored, or calculated. It only affects how historical trends are visualized.
You can enable or disable this setting in your project settings.
Why it matters
Ranking data is not always available for every date in a chart.
This can happen when:
A keyword was added after the selected date range began
Historical data is unavailable for part of the period
A keyword was temporarily paused or removed
Data collection was interrupted
Maintain Continuous History gives you control over how these gaps appear in historical charts.
How it works
Maintain Continuous Rank History = ON (Enabled)
When enabled:
Chart lines are connected across missing periods
Historical trends appear smoother
It is easier to identify long-term movement patterns
This is useful for:
Client reporting
Executive dashboards
Long-term trend analysis
Maintain Continuous History = OFF
When disabled:
Historical charts show gaps where ranking data does not exist
Only confirmed ranking records are displayed
Missing periods remain visible
This is useful for:
Technical SEO analysis
Auditing historical data
Investigating ranking changes
What Maintain Continuous History does not do
Maintain Continuous History does not:
Change ranking positions
Create new ranking data
Modify visibility metrics
Affect movement calculations
Influence Share of Voice calculations
Change reports or exports
It only changes how ranking history is displayed visually in charts.
Migration from Hybrid Tracking
Keyword.com is retiring Hybrid Tracking and moving projects to Consistent Tracking and Enhanced Tracking.
As part of this change:
Out of Tracked Range (OTR) is being retired
Maintain Continuous History no longer affects OTR behaviour
Maintain Continuous History is now focused solely on historical chart visualization
If your project still uses Hybrid Tracking during the migration period, some older reports and charts may contain OTR values. These will continue to display historically but will no longer be generated after migration.
Best practices
Enable Maintain Continuous History when:
Presenting data to clients
Reviewing long-term ranking trends
You prefer cleaner chart visualization
Disable Maintain Continuous History when:
Performing audits
Investigating ranking anomalies
Reviewing raw historical ranking data