What does it mean when Moz KW explorer returns a negative keyword difficulty score (eg -2)?

[FlagshipCons]

I recently did a keyowrd difficulty lookup in Moz keyword explorer as usual and for the first time a saw several (out of 100s) of negative keyowrd scores (generally -2). Is this a bug, what does it mean?

[NickW816]

I have never seen a keyword score lower than 1, even if you type in gibberish into the KWE, it should not show lower than one. There is a post Rand did on this- https://moz.com/community/q/what-is-a-good-keyword-difficulty-score. It may be worth checking out and commenting on there (with a screenshot if possible) to find out what is going on. I am thinking it may have just been a glitch and it would be worth trying to but in the KWE again if you can.

In the mean time, you could check the keyword phrase on Google Keyword Planner to see if you can get an idea of search volume for that keyword phrase, which should give you a general idea of if its highly search or not. Generally speaking the higher the search volume, the more difficult it will be to target.

[KristinaKeyser]

Hi there! Kristina with Moz's Help Team here.

Can you please grab some screenshots and provide all of the details on the search you're running and shoot these over to our team by emailing help@moz.com and we'll be happy to take a look at this for you!

Thank you,
-Kristina

[kennick7]

The same thing has happened to me, on two VERY different search terms. I've figured out that in the software the KW Difficulty value shows that it's "unavailable", but when downloaded into a spreadsheet for some reason it shows up as "-2" instead of the word "unavailable.

[KristinaKeyser]

Well hello again! We'd love to investigate this further for you. Can you please email help@moz.com with the specific examples of what you're seeing and we'll be happy to troubleshoot the issue further for you there. Thanks so much!

[pilot-shop]

Are there any updates on this?  I'm seeing the same for some keywords in my lists - "unavailable" in KW Explorer and "-2" when downloaded to spreadsheet.  Thank you.

[KristinaKeyser]

We'd love to investigate this further for you. Can you please email help@moz.com with the specific examples of what you're seeing and we'll be happy to troubleshoot the issue further for you there. Thanks so much!

[pilot-shop]

Solved:

Open your Keywords List and select (check box) all of keywords that say, "unavailable."  Click, ". . ." to expand menu and select, "Refresh."