Keyword Explorer is Now Live; Ask Me Anything About It!

[Nick_Centralpoint]

Great new feature, Rand and team! I have a quick question about the search volume ranges displayed in the tool. For starters, I tried the tool with Dutch (Netherlands) volumes this morning. I got a strange number for the very populair search phrase "laptop kopen" (something like "buy laptop") and it says 51-100 while GKP gives me bucket 40.500. Even though this is a yearly average put in a volume bucket, the difference is huge. How is this possible? Thanks for the reply!

[rjonesx. 0]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the question! Our keyword volume is all US, so that is the number of times the keyword is searched in the US (which is admittedly much lower than those searching for "laptop kopen" in the US).

We hope to add international support in future iterations!

[Nick_Centralpoint]

Thanks for this. I thought (since I selected 'Netherlands' when I made the keyword list) that the search volumes would be for The Netherlands and not the US. But this explains it. I hope international support is on the way then.

[Charles-O]

Hey Rand!

Let me first congratulate you and your team for that awesome product that you guys succesfully delivered with time & budget constraint.

At the company I work for, we are using this tool for both english and french languages as most of our clients are situated in Québec, Canada. Since I do SEO in both languages all the time, how would you qualify your database for languages other than english (specifically French)? Are we looking at the same Accuracy? Are there problems related to suggestions & semantics?

Thanks a lot!

[redbamboomarketing]

Hola Moz & Rand -

Could you go more indepth on the metrics introduced with this tool - Difficulty, Opportunity and Potential? I'd love to see some examples and context of how you would use them, and maybe some explanation of how you derive the number (is it linear, or is a move from 25-30 harder than a move from 20-25?)

Also, are these metrics new, or do they align with previous tools (like the legacy keyword difficulty tool)?

Thanks and looking forward to digging in more!

[randfish]

Hi Charles-Olivier,

Thanks so much! We're very excited to get this first version launched. Re: French - the database won't be nearly as comprehensive for suggestions as it is in English. That's not to say it's useless, but the tool is certainly English-language-centric at this first launch. In the future, we hope to add support for other languages and regions, too.

p.s. Québec is one of my favorite cities in the world; if there's ever a great marketing conference there, tell them to invite me! Would love to visit again.

[randfish]

Hi Stephen - certainly! There's actually a bunch of detail in the blog post, and Dr. Pete will be writing another post next week that includes more depth on how we calculate each metric and why we chose the algorithms/formulas that we did.

These metrics are somewhat new - Difficulty we obviously had before, but it's been upgraded and improved to be more accurate and have a better range. Opportunity is based off Dr. Pete's prototype tool from Mozcon last year. Importance is a user-modifiable score that we saw in almost everyone's Excel spreadsheets and thus, wanted to re-create in the app, and Potential is a wholly new combination of all the metrics to help you prioritize.

[Charles-O]

This is exciting! If I have suggestions for the tools, I will let you guys know.

Québec is indeed a great city, we are pretty proud of it! We usually organize the InboundMTL event in Montreal. We could hit you up along with some hubspot speakers and/or other agencies. Would you visit as a guest speaker or conference attendee?

Keep up the good work Rand, we are big fans!

[randfish]

If my schedule allows it, I'd be happy to present. I typically fill up ~1 year in advance these days (crazy, I know), but if you have 2017 plans, hit me up! rand@moz.com.

[dsexton10]

I am excited to use the new Keyword Explorer for a Maine law firm. My goal is to prioritize topics for the law firm blog. Example potential search phrases might be "Maine dog bite laws".  Obviously there  will be MUCH higher search volume
 on the keyword "dog bite laws" than for "Maine dog bite laws". Suppose the Keyword Explorer show the volume for "Maine dog bite laws" to be 10 and the search volume for "dog bite laws" to be 1000. Can I assume that the Google SERP for a search done in Maine  for "dog bite laws" will probably push web pages of domains with Maine on many pages higher in the SERP?

in other words, if I create a quality, kick ass page about the TOPIC of Maine Dog bite laws, that Google will push up my  SERP position for searches done in Maine?  IN other words, as I do my analysis should I also  consider the search volume for my topic phrase without "Maine" in the search?

thank. Well done on the new tool.  Also what is the time frame of the search volume? one month ?

Dan

[randfish]

Hi Dan - yeah, I think what you're describing makes good sense. You can use the non-geo-specific term to get an idea of broad popularity and in most cases, you'll be able to rank well in your local geography (assuming Google thinks there's local intent) for the broader term with a page targeting the regional one.

e.g. If I search for Patent Attorneys from my office (which is in Seattle), Google biases to show me patent attorneys who are in Seattle. Very similar to the results I get if I search Seattle Patent Attorneys (though some variation is always present).

[Gavo]

Loving this new Moz Tool!

As a matter of convenience, it would be great to efficiently conduct a backlink analysis of competitors in the SERP Analysis to expediently check their link profile. Can moz link "Linking RDs To Root Domain" to its Open Explorer tool to open up in a new tab the backlink profile of that domain name that is listed in the top 10 organic results? That would be super convenient!

[randfish]

Totally agree. We're looking at making it more integrated with OSE very soon. Thanks Gavo!

[Tymen]

Hi Rand,

In the Netherlands/ Belgium I get no data.. I understand Moz will expand this tool worldwide. Any idea when we can go nuts?

Thanx in advance

[randfish]

It will likely be a few months at least before we can broaden outside the US, and maybe some more before we get to non-English languages. Sorry about that! We will get there; just need to do a lot of work to make it happen.

[K3v1n]

Wow this is amazing!! I was day dreaming a while ago about Moz creating a tool like this, you must have read my mind! Thank you for the 300 queries per month for legacy $99 members, much appreciated!

Just one bit of constructive feedback, I'm wondering if you should maybe make it more clear (maybe in the more info snippet) that volume is currently all US based? This did have me scratching my head a bit at first, as I'm UK based, and I'd just assumed that when I select UK, the volume would be UK, I realise now that this isn't yet the case.

With regard potential score, how is it able to determine the potential for anything other than US searches given that the volume will be incorrect for anything other than US, and I assume that volume is important when it comes to calculating potential?Also when there is no data for a keyword, how can there be a score for potential since the volume isn't known?

The only other bit of feedback is that there's a lot of "no data" for terms that I can see on my GA stats have hundreds of impressions per month. Is this just because the sites I work on are UK based and these terms probably don't have any searches in the US?

Thanks!

Kev

[randfish]

Hi Kev - yeah, totally agree that we need to make that more clear. We'll get to work on that asap.

And yes - Potential takes into account whatever metrics it can; when those are absent (like volume), it uses a low volume bucket (I think 0-10) so as not to overstate. Often when we don't have volume, it's either a very new keyword or a very uncommon one.

And yeah - we don't cover the UK yet, but hope to in the future.

[K3v1n]

Brilliant, thanks Rand

[Gyorgy.B]

Hi Rand

What can non-US Moz customers use until you add UK or AU search volumes? We use the keyword difficulty tool's score and search volume reports quite often.

Would you keep the keyword difficulty tool live until you fix the keyword explorer's search volume?

[randfish]

Hi Gyorgy - you can use the old KW Difficulty tool, but the search volumes there aren't accurate for non-US either, and the difficulty scores are less accurate, too. I'd suggest using KW Explorer if you want all the other scores (those are accurate) and AdWords KW Planner in the meantime.

We're prioritizing UK, Canada, and Australia volume data very soon - hopefully will be in the product in the next 60 days.