The weekly ranking routine: 15 minutes that keep your otto.de visibility under control

Why a fixed slot matters more than daily data

Most sellers track more than they evaluate. New positions every day help little if nobody looks at them – or if someone looks every day and reacts to every fluctuation. Both cost time without results.

A fixed quarter of an hour a week, always on the same day, solves both problems. Monday or Tuesday works well: the weekend with its different demand is in the data, and you have the week to act.

Steps 1 and 2: overall picture and biggest losses (5 minutes)

1. Overall picture: look at two numbers compared with the previous week: the page-1 share and the average position of your most important search terms. If both have barely moved, it is a quiet week.
2. Biggest losses: sort by change and look at the five search terms with the biggest loss. No more – the other small movements are usually normal fluctuation.

Step 3: roughly classify the losses (5 minutes)

A quick check is enough for each of the five losses; one of four causes almost always applies:

• Stock or status: is the product available and active in the marketplace status?
• Your own change: did you change price, title, images or ad budget?
• Competition: is a new or cheaper product now ahead of you?
• Fluctuation: was the position already unsettled in the weeks before? Then wait a week.

Note the suspected cause next to each loss in one word. Do the thorough root-cause analysis only where a high-revenue term is affected.

Step 4: match gains with your changes (3 minutes)

Also look at the three biggest gains and ask: did one of your own changes cause this? If yes, that is the most valuable insight of the week, because you can repeat that measure for other products. If not, check whether a competitor has sold out – then the gain is probably temporary.

Step 5: at most three tasks (2 minutes)

At the end, write down at most three concrete tasks, for example: 'reorder stock for product A', 'add ‘mit Deckel’ to product B's title', 'check competitor C's price for product D'. More than three rarely get done in a normal week.

Enter every change you make in a change log with its date. In the next routine you then see in step 4 whether it worked.

Once a month: the longer view

Once a month, add 30 minutes to the weekly routine for the monthly comparison: how have page-1 share and average position developed over four weeks, which products are gaining for good, which are slowly losing? Slow losses barely show in the weekly view and are often the most expensive.

Frequently asked questions