The Output Folder is the existing local directory on your machine where RankGear writes everything it produces — reports, workbooks, run logs, recovery files, and related artifacts.
| Term | Output Folder |
|---|---|
| Category | Product and Workflow |
| Also known as | Output Directory, Report Folder |
| Where it appears | Reports → Where they land |
What it means in RankGear
You choose the Output Folder in the Reports area, under the “Where they land” setting. It is not a folder RankGear invents on the fly — you point the app at a directory that already exists on your disk, and from then on every artifact a run generates is written there: the finished report, any workbook it exports, the log of what the run did, and the recovery files RankGear keeps so an interrupted run can pick up where it left off. Sending each run to one predictable location means new output sits alongside the last, so you can compare results over time without hunting across your file system.
How to interpret it
Read the Output Folder as the plain answer to “where did my results go?” rather than as anything RankGear scores. When a run finishes, the artifacts it names should appear inside this directory. If they do not, the usual causes are a folder that was moved or deleted after you selected it, or a permissions problem that stopped the app writing to disk — so confirm the folder still exists and is writable before assuming the run itself failed. Often the analysis completed and only the final write was blocked.
| Artifact | What it is |
|---|---|
| Reports | The scored analysis output from a run |
| Workbooks | Exported data files you can open and work in |
| Logs | A record of what each run did |
| Recovery files | Snapshots that let an interrupted run resume |
Example
You set the Output Folder to a directory such as ~/RankGear/Reports, then run a full analysis on a target page. When it completes, you open that directory and find the scored report, an exported workbook, and a timestamped log from the run — all in one place, next to the outputs from last week’s run of the same page.
Important considerations
- The folder must already exist and be writable; RankGear writes into it rather than creating a new tree for you.
- It holds several kinds of file — reports, workbooks, logs, and recovery snapshots, not reports alone — so it grows over time and is worth occasional housekeeping.
- The recovery files stored here are what let an interrupted run resume, so pointing successive runs at the same folder is a deliberate choice, not merely a tidy one.
- The Output Folder is a navigation and file-management setting that describes where RankGear puts things. It is not a ranking signal and has no bearing on how a page performs in search.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.