Rankings on bol: why you should not rely on a single source
Lars HurkmansCo-founder26 February 2026Temps de lecture 7 minutesAn organic position shows where your product stands on its own merits; a combined position mixes organic and sponsored visibility. That difference determines whether advertising on a keyword is still necessary or exactly what makes the difference. Many tools and the bol seller account only show that mixed position.
What does bol itself show you about your positions?
Bol offers a number of insights into findability on bol in the seller account. Through the search trends tool you can see which keywords are popular and how the search volume develops over time. You can compare search terms and recognise seasonal patterns.
Bol also shows position information, but in a specific way. You see your position per keyword on days when you had impressions (that is: days when your product was actually seen). That position is weighted based on how many impressions were organic and how many were paid. So it is an average position over the day, in which organic and sponsored visibility run together. On days when you had no impressions, you see no data.
That gives you an indication of where you stand, but it does not make clear what your organic position is separate from your ads. If you want to know how your product performs on its own merits, the seller account has no answer for that. For that you depend on external tools. And there lies a difference that is not always visible.
How do external tools measure your rankings?
The bol API offers an endpoint with which you can request per product on which keywords and categories it was found, including the position and the number of impressions. For each position it is indicated whether that keyword was also sponsored.
But if it was sponsored, the position the API returns is already a mix of organic and sponsored. It is not the purely organic position, and not the purely sponsored position either. It is the position as the consumer saw the product, influenced by both the algorithm and the ad. You cannot read from that position where your product would stand without ad budget.
Rylee uses this endpoint and, at the time of writing (March 2026), shows the positions as they come out of the API. The bol seller account does the same. In both cases you see a position that may have been influenced by ads, without being able to see what your organic position would be without ad budget.
The result: you see a position, but you do not know where your product would stand on its own merits. Always check with the tool you use whether organic and sponsored positions are shown separately.
Why does the distinction between organic and sponsored matter?
Because a combined position hides where your product stands on its own merits, and so whether your ad budget on that keyword still makes a difference.
Suppose your product is in position 8 for the keyword "led desk lamp". You advertise on that keyword. You see in your tool that your position is stable, so you keep your ad budget as it is.
But what if your product is organically in position 6 and the ad pushes you to position 8? Or what if you are organically in position 35 and the ad pulls you up to position 8? In the first case you are wasting budget on a keyword where you already score well organically. In the second case the ad is essential, because without a paid position you do not exist on page one.
Without the distinction between organic and sponsored you cannot make that trade-off. You are advertising in the dark.
This becomes more concrete when you translate it into budget. Most sellers have a limited ad budget. You want to spend that budget where it has the most effect. Keywords where you already rank high organically, you can leave alone. Keywords with high search volume but a low organic position are exactly the candidates where advertising makes a difference. But to make that split, you need to know where you stand organically. Not where you stand including ads.
How does MarktMentor measure your rankings?
MarktMentor shows purely organic positions, separated from sponsored results. The organic positions are not taken from the same API endpoint that bol and Rylee get their data from. MarktMentor uses other endpoints to determine the actual organic position, separate from ads.
In addition, MarktMentor reads from the bol API whether impressions come from ads or not. So you do see how much your sponsored positions contribute to your visibility, but that data is separated from your organic position. They are two layers you can lay side by side, not one number in which everything runs together.
Share of Voice: what share of your audience do you reach?
Besides positions, MarktMentor shows the Share of Voice per product: the percentage of the total potential audience that actually saw your product. A Share of Voice of 24% means that 24% of all consumers who searched for relevant keywords saw your product. The remaining 76% was not reached.
This is a different type of insight from a position. A position tells you where you stand. Share of Voice tells you how many of your potential customers you actually reach. A product can be in a reasonable position for a keyword, but if that keyword has little volume, the absolute impact is limited. Share of Voice combines position with search volume and so gives a more complete picture of your visibility.
An interesting situation is when your Share of Voice rises while your impressions fall. That means the keyword itself has become less popular, but that your product performs relatively better within that keyword. Without this insight you would only see the falling impressions and might wrongly conclude that there is a problem.
How does MarktMentor track your positions automatically?
At MarktMentor, positions are tracked automatically as soon as you connect your bol store. The tool recognises by itself on which keywords and in which categories your products are found. You do not have to set up keywords manually.
That is relevant because many sellers do not know exactly on which keywords their products are found. The bol algorithm determines that based on your title, specifications and sales performance. If you have to indicate yourself which keywords you want to monitor, you may miss keywords that do bring traffic but that you had not expected.
On first use, the advice is to start with the category overview instead of the search terms. The reason: products on bol are fundamentally indexed from categories. A drop at category level also leads, behind the scenes, to a drop on keywords. Because categories are more compact than keywords, they give faster insight into where rises or falls occur. From there you can zoom in on the search terms for more detail.
How do you use rankings for your advertising strategy?
The combination of organic positions, Share of Voice and search volume gives you a concrete framework for your ad budget.
Keywords where you already rank high organically have lower priority for ads. Your budget is better spent on keywords where growth is still possible. One nuance: if the first positions for a keyword are largely taken by sponsored results, it can still make sense to advertise, because consumers mainly look at what is visible first.
Keywords where you fall just outside page one (for example position 30-50) are interesting advertising candidates. Consumers generally do not look much further than the first page. A product in position 43 is not seen by the vast majority of searchers.
The trigger to start advertising is the combination of a high search volume, a low organic ranking and a low Share of Voice. A high search volume indicates there is a lot of potential, while the low ranking and Share of Voice indicate that this potential is not yet being used.
If you want to raise your organic position on such keywords yourself, you can read how in improving rankings. How the ads themselves are ranked and what you pay per click is in the bol advertising system.
Without the distinction between organic and sponsored you cannot make these trade-offs. You then only see a combined position and have to guess whether advertising makes sense or not. So always check whether the tool you use shows your organic position, separate from sponsored placements.
Read more:
- MarktMentor vs Rylee: the full comparison
- Findability on bol: how it works
- Improving your rankings on bol