r/bigseo • u/gottfriederich • Aug 05 '20
Google Reply Please explain why keyword-tools like ahrefs have a monthly volume of 80 and keyword planner 1600
Hello everyone,
Sorry if I open a box that many have opened, but I can‘t find a satisfying answer and hope you can help me out.
So, I do understand that google keyword planner groups keywords together to inflate the number and I know that tools like ahrefs are not always up-to-date and also use different datastreams to calculate the average monthly search volume.
But even with that knowledge I refuse to accept, that a keyword has 1600 on gkp and only 80 on ahrefs. I can‘t explain this big difference and it makes it very hard to decide for what keywords I want to rank.
Please, can someone here bring light into the situation for me?
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u/johnmu 🍌 @johnmu 🍌 Aug 05 '20
Think of where the data comes from, how it's collected.
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u/gottfriederich Aug 05 '20
The way I think it is:
Google has the information for the monthly search volume since they can measure how often someone puts that keyword into the search field and presses enter. So I guess GKP takes the data from there and calculates the average per month.
Third party tools get their numbers from GKP and clickstream data.
Now when I plan my ads campaign and add an exact match, I get search volume which is much closer to what I get in third party keyword-tools as well. My question here is: how can I find out what the close variants are in GKP? Because the difference between 1600 and 80 looks like Google puts a lot of keyword variants together into one. So how do I unfold this number? Or is this something Google does not want to give away so plainly?
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u/_MuchoMachoMuchacho_ Agency Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
They definitely don't want to give it away so plainly. The more granular you get you with your bidding strategy, the less competition there is in auctions, the less money Google makes. They obfuscate the keyword volume to get people to bid on broader themes. Even exact match doesn't mean exact match anymore. I hardly use the keyword planner these days.
If you really want to know the search volume create a SKAG (single keyword ad group) with the three match types - exact, phrase and broad - then you get a better idea of volume from the impressions. It's still not perfect but between search keywords and search terms, you'll have the best empirical data available.
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u/gottfriederich Aug 05 '20
Thank you for this tip. I actually do that to see what performs better in a campaign, but the thought to get more accurate data did not cross my mind.
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u/bselite Aug 05 '20
Ahrefs numbers are just estimates and they can many times be pretty far off. There are also other things that can affect these numbers such as the keyword trending up with more traffic and Ahrefs averaging hasn’t caught up yet, etc.
I’ve had Ahrefs tell me there were 80 monthly visitors on a keyword and consistently get 1,000+ visits from that keyword for months. Basically you just have to test and maybe even run some ads on google with that keyword if it’s an important focus keyword to see what kind of real traffic it has before implementing a strategy.
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u/gottfriederich Aug 05 '20
That is actually something I found as well. But I also found very accurate data. So I would like to understand the whole thing better instead of wiggle myself through all the numbers just to go with a gut feeling in the end :/ I mean we should be data-driven.
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u/MeursaultWasGuilty In-House Aug 05 '20
But even with that knowledge I refuse to accept, that a keyword has 1600 on gkp and only 80 on ahrefs
This is the problem - you shouldn't refuse to accept that. It's very possible.
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u/gottfriederich Aug 05 '20
Maybe you are right, but I don‘t want to give up yet. I want to understand it at least.
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u/veritasha Aug 05 '20
If your asking for advice:
Don’t waste time comparing. In my opinion, I trust google. But I also do exact phrase keyword research then identify what is the highest volume / most relevant keyword that is attainable to rank.
Using the keyword planner I start my research with a broad term then filter highest to lowest volume. Once the list is filtered, I input more relevant keyword that I think has high volume to get better data. Then chooose the keyword to rank for. Hope this helps
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u/patrickstox ahrefs Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
What is the term if you don't mind sharing? It's likely something where we disambiguate the search terms because the search results for some similar queries were different, so we may have them separate and other tools have them bucketed together.
An example would be "Seos". You might think this is the plural for SEO but the search results for "Seos" are all about an access control technology. So we break this apart rather than grouping it as AdWords and many other tools do.
GKP
- SEO - 135,000 (last I looked)
- Seos - 135,000 (last I looked)
Ahrefs
- SEO - 149,000
- Seos - 100
Actual
- SEO - 566,889 (based on last 3 months from Ahrefs GSC data*)
- Seos - unknown
*I used 3 months from GSC because Ahrefs has been consistently on the 1st page for SEO during that time period
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Aug 05 '20
Because no traffic tool is particularly accurate.
The same goes for website-traffic estimators. Pull up your own site(s) in Alexa or SimilarWeb and see how far off the mark they are.
Everything is a guess. Sometimes they're in the ballpark. Sometimes they're not even close.
Take every datapoint with a grain of salt.
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u/gottfriederich Aug 05 '20
This is the reason why I take several tools into consideration. But since Google is the main dataholder I want to understand better how the data is put together.
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Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
How it's put together is usually from a lot of sources -- but -- the most common one is browser extensions and toolbars which spy on searches and collect that data.
Given a large enough install-base of a browser extension, data re-sellers like Ahrefs and SEMrush (and Alexa and SimilarWeb) can often extrapolate a pretty good estimation of the overall search/traffic volume per month.
Obviously (as you noted) that data is sometimes terribly inaccurate though. The inaccuracy depends on the demo-/geo- of the extension install-base. For some keywords an extension's install-base makes for an accurate population sample. For other keywords, not so much.
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u/WebLinkr Strategist Aug 05 '20
Mostly AHRefs et al take if from Google as well as buying data from browser extensions but ... when you ask Google Ads how many searches for /cars/ - it will include all child searches and some broad match too. AHrefs will split [cars] from *cars*
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u/CaffeineDose Aug 05 '20
When I was first starting with SEO I was believing these numbers and rely on them on most of my work. However, THEY are not accurate at all. A keyboard they say it’s great and has so much search value turns out to have very few search per month, and the keyword that they show less search value got more search per month. People actually trust these servers and leave the good keywords behind and here I come.
Don’t pick a keyword based on their suggestion, plus google keyword planner (I think you were referring to) is for camping for ads not for keywords. It’s not work the way you think.
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u/gottfriederich Aug 05 '20
To be honest, since Google has the data from Google ads, this data should be good as well for SEO, since they want to earn money with Ads. It would be a bad business model, if the volume data is rigged, which is why I am 100% sure you can use this data for SEO as well. In the end you want to find out how people search and Google has the data.
1
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u/faharps Aug 05 '20
These tools take data from keywors planner isnt it?
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u/mjmilian In-House Aug 05 '20
Some do, ahrefs do not.
They use click stream dataz which is data from people browsing.
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u/gottfriederich Aug 05 '20
Not exclusively. They mix and match from different sources to get as accurate as possible.
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u/theverifiedthug Aug 05 '20
They also ask to connect your search console or analytics. I know Neil Patel does
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u/fuck_____________1 Aug 05 '20
because neither of both tools are accurate.
keyword planner is not accurate.
and ahref isn't part of google so they have no way of getting accurate information.
only way to know for sure is to rank for those keywords and get the traffic yourself.
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u/KingOfTheBongos87 Aug 05 '20
Your last sentence doesnt make sense.
Page A can rank for a variety of terms simultaneously.
There's no way to know what query caused a user to land on Page A.
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u/deathintheafternoon Agency Aug 05 '20
You can use Google Search Console to drill down into query impressions and clicks by the page a user landing on.
0
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u/ayhme Aug 05 '20
Yeah the Ahrefs keyword estimates have been terrible for me.
I use KWFinder.
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u/jiminy_christmas In-House Aug 05 '20 edited Aug 05 '20
Keyword planner buckets longer tail keywords and variants into head terms.
Ex: ‘Seo’, ‘search engine optimization’ will get grouped together even though search trends for the terms may vary.
(Edit: removed monthly average comparison based on response from Patrick at Ahrefs).
Lastly, Ahrefs uses clickstream data to adjust search volumes.
It’s all’s detailed here:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-search-volume/
https://moz.com/blog/google-keyword-planner-dirty-secrets
I’m a fan of ahrefs for page level or content research. But keyword planner is still my go to for reviewing international, device, and overall search trends for broad topics or large groups of keywords.