RankNest

Client Reports Overview

Generate a branded SEO report for a client, review it, and share it as a link, a PDF, or a scheduled email, all under your agency's name.

Client Reports turns the data RankNest already holds for a client into a report the client can read: search performance, work completed, site health, and the other sections you choose, under your agency's logo, colours and contact details. You can share it as a link, download it as a PDF, email it on a schedule, or post it to Slack.

Each report is a snapshot of one period. RankNest reads the data once when the report is generated, stores the result, and never changes it afterwards. That is what makes an old report safe to keep sending: the numbers a client saw in March are still the numbers in March's report.

Where to find it

Open a client and click Client Reports in the client sidebar. The page has:

  • A period picker and a Generate report button in the header.
  • A history list of every report for the client, with its status and actions.
  • A Delivery channels card for Slack and webhook delivery. See Delivery Channels.
  • A Branding for this client card for per-client overrides. See Branding.
  • A Report settings panel for the share link, sections, schedule, email wording and PDF options.

Client Reports is available on paid plans. Trial accounts and accounts without a plan see an upgrade prompt with a sample report instead. See Pricing.

If your agency branding is not set up yet, a banner at the top of the page links to Agency Settings. Reports still generate without it, but they show no logo or agency name.

How to generate a report

  1. Pick a period in the header: the last 7, 28, 30, 90 or 180 days, or Previous calendar month. A calendar-month report compares the month with the month before it.
  2. Click Generate report. Generation usually takes a few seconds; the new report appears at the top of the history list.
  3. Click View (or Preview) to open the report as the client will see it.
  4. Click PDF to download it, or Send test to me to email a copy to your own address.

Each client can generate up to 20 reports per day.

Note: A report never calls Google or any paid data source after it is generated. If one source could not be read (Search Console was disconnected, for example), that section says so and the rest of the report still builds. Generate again later to get a complete one.

Report status

Each row in the history list shows one of three statuses:

  • Ready: the report built and is visible on the share link.
  • Awaiting approval: the report built but is not on the share link yet. This happens when Hold scheduled reports for my approval is on. Click Review to read it, then Approve or Approve and send.
  • Failed: the report could not be built. Open it to see why, fix the cause, and generate again.

Approved reports also show how many times they have been viewed and when they were last opened. See Sharing & Privacy for what a view records.

Choosing what the report contains

In Report settings, the Sections list controls what appears:

  • Search performance: clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position from Search Console, compared with the previous period.
  • Work completed: tasks finished during the period. By default this is a count; turn on task details to list the task titles.
  • Site health: audit findings and open issues.
  • Core Web Vitals: the latest Lighthouse results from Site Audit.
  • Business Profile: posts and photos published to Google Business Profile.
  • Internal links: linking plan progress.
  • Rankings, AI visibility, Backlinks and Competitors: only shown when those features are switched on for your account. With Rankings on, Keywords in the table sets how many keywords the report lists.

Turn a section off and it disappears from every report generated after that. Reports already generated keep the sections they were built with.

Below the sections you can set:

  • Default period: the period scheduled reports cover.
  • Note to your client: shown at the top of every report and email.
  • Standing commentary per section: text that appears under a section on every report, for anything you want to say each time.
  • Draft the summary with AI on every report: writes an opening summary from the report's numbers. You can edit it before approving.
  • Hold scheduled reports for my approval before they go out: scheduled reports wait as Awaiting approval until you approve them.

Click Save settings after changing any of these.

Tips

  • Set up Branding before you generate the first report. Branding is applied live, so a later change updates every link, but the first thing a client sees should look right.
  • Generate a report for the previous calendar month on the first of the month. It lines up with how most clients think about results.
  • Use Send test to me on any report before you share it. You get the exact email a client would, with your wording and branding.

Troubleshooting

The Email button is missing. Add at least one recipient in Email schedule and save. Email also needs the share link to be on, because every email links to the report.

Generate report shows a daily limit message. The client has reached 20 reports for today. Try again tomorrow.

A section is empty. The feature behind it has no data for this client in that period, or the connection was not available when the report was built. Check the client's connections in Client Integrations and generate again.

Last updated 2026-10-16