Bye Bye Keyword Difficulty Tool :(

[GregDixson]

So the Keyword Difficulty Tool will be retired from the end of this month. Is anyone else worried about this? - because I just don't trust the numbers coming back from Keyword Explorer. Never have. I've even raised this with Moz staff previously, when there was a huge difference between the score given by the keyword difficulty tool vs keyword explorer.

From what I see in Domain and Page authority and in the SERPs then the score from keyword difficulty tool, was always more accurate, and thankfully have been able to use both tools, but from next month I feel somewhat uneasy about solely relying on the score from Keyword Explorer.

Thoughts? and feel free to run your own tests on keywords and I'm sure you'll see what I mean.

[Guest]

This post is deleted!

[randfish]

Hi Greg - totally hear you, but strongly, strongly disagree

I worked personally on the scores for both and I can promise that the old KW Difficulty tool's numbers just aren't right. The old tool frequently over or understates the difficulty of ranking, and it relies on metrics that are outdated (age of domain? yech). I would strongly advise you to switch to using the metrics from KW Explorer. They're more accurate, the spread is better (the old KW Difficulty tool scrunches up scores so almost everything is between 30-70, when it really should be a wider spread), the other metrics are way more useful (CTR % and volume), and the accuracy of the metrics fetches is solid too (sometimes, old KW Difficulty doesn't even grab data correctly).

A few examples:

• "Harry Potter" - old tool says 80, KW Explorer says 89 (not a huge difference, but you can see what I mean about the scrunching effect -- clearly this KW should be one of the highest difficulties possible)
• "calendar app" - old tool says 62, KW Explorer says 76 (on a hand review, I think we'd all agree 76 is far more accurate; this is a very tough keyword)
• "northwest moss garden examples" - old tool says 47, KW Explorer says 33 (this is one of the easier keywords out there, with lots of low DA sites in the results; I think 33 is far more indicative of reality)

I know it's tough to make a switch or trust something new, but having studied these both closely and worked on the design of the metrics and data for both, I can assure you KW Explorer's Difficulty metrics are head and shoulders above the old tool.

[GregDixson]

Hi Rand, thanks for taking the time to reply, and give your examples. I appreciate the old tool is most likely outdated pullling on old stats, and of course there is a need for forward development.

I’ve run some more keyword tests and am seeing for the most part a lot closer difficulty score between the two tools now, so am feeling slightly less nervy about solely relying on the new kw tool.

I’ll give you the example of mine which I gave to the Moz help team some months ago when I was consistently seeing bigger differences in the two tools numbers. 'constitutional homeopathic remedies' - the new keyword Explorer gave a Difficulty of 6, whereas the old Keyword tool shows difficulty at 22%.  6 with DA’s of 40’s and 50’s in the SERPs just didn’t seem to add up. and I was seeing lower scores for many many keywords, all of which looked way more difficult to rank for. (even this example checked again now is a ‘slightly better’ “gap” at 15 new kw explorer tool vs 23% old)

other keywords checked now for reference:

• late menopause benefits - old tool 45%, KW explorer 40
• decorating a holiday home - old tool  25%, KW explorer 25
• tree pruning - old tool 58%, KW explorer 64

So it seems like there’s more similarity than difference now (maybe the tool has been worked on some more) and possibly I just need to get used to the wider spread of numbers in some cases. I’m certainly a lot more confident seeing what I’m seeing now.

As an aside, feedback while I’m here!… the old SERP view graphic was a LOT easier to read at a glance with the DA / PA scores for each of the top10, vs the new tool list view

[randfish]

Thanks Greg - I hear you on the comparison graphic side. I'll see what we can do about upgrading the UI/UX of that longer term.

[grayson_powerdigitalmarketingi]

This Biggest disappointment is the ability to analyze multiple keywords at once. The SERP analysis was accurate and that's what we used it for. Will the keyword explorer tool be able to analyze multiple keywords at once?

Our agency uses another tool for semantic search optimization, so, unfortunately, the new tool doesn't have the functionality we need to look at the landscape of the SERP for multiple keywords. The keyword difficulty tool looked at 20 keywords at a time.

[randfish]

Yes! We've had this ability since day one Just click "create or upload a new list" and you can create a list of hundreds or even thousands of keywords for analysis and comparison all at once.