The Settings screen is RankGear’s engine-driven configuration area — the single place you set general options, choose which factors are active, connect data providers, manage word lists, apply branding, and store protected API credentials.
| Term | Settings Screen |
|---|---|
| Category | Product and Workflow |
| Also known as | Settings |
| Where it appears | Settings |
What it means in RankGear
Settings is where you tell the engine how to run before you analyze anything. Rather than scattering options across individual reports, RankGear centralizes them here: the general application options, the roster of factors the engine can evaluate, the third-party providers it pulls data from, the word lists it references, your branding for exported deliverables, and the API keys it needs to reach those providers. Because these choices are engine-driven, what you set on this screen carries forward into every run, workbook, and saved report until you change it.
How to interpret it
Read Settings as the state of your engine, not as a report you act on. Before a run, it answers three practical questions: which inputs are selected, which factors and providers are switched on, and whether the credentials those providers require are present and valid. If a report later looks incomplete — a provider column is empty, or a factor you expected is missing — Settings is the first place to check, because a disconnected provider or an inactive factor there explains the gap. Treat the API-credential fields as sensitive: they are stored to authorize data pulls, not to be shared.
| Configuration area | What it controls |
|---|---|
| General options | Application-wide defaults for how the engine runs. |
| Factors | Which of RankGear’s factors are active for evaluation. |
| Providers | The third-party data sources the engine queries. |
| Word lists | Reference vocabularies the engine draws on during analysis. |
| Branding | Identity applied to exported reports and deliverables. |
| API credentials | Protected keys that authorize provider access. |
Example
Say you add a new SERP data provider to your workflow. You open Settings, enable that provider, paste its API key into the protected credentials field, and confirm the factors that depend on it are active. From that point on, every analysis you launch uses the new provider automatically — you do not reconfigure it per report. If a run comes back missing that provider’s data, you return to Settings and verify the key is still valid rather than editing the report itself.
Important considerations
- Settings describes how RankGear behaves and where you navigate to configure it — it is not a ranking signal, and nothing you toggle here is scored by Google.
- Provider data reached through these credentials is a comparative indicator on that provider’s own scale, not a Google ranking score; correlation with rankings is not causation.
- API credentials are stored so the engine can authorize data pulls; keep them protected and treat them as you would any secret.
- Changes here are engine-wide and persistent — they affect every subsequent run and saved report, so confirm your selections before a batch of work.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.