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

[randfish]

Howdy gang - as you probably saw, we launched our biggest new tool in Pro in many years today: https://moz.com/explorer

If you're a Moz Pro subscriber, you've already got access. We went ahead and gave folks who were at $99/month before today 300 queries/month. If you're signing up new, $99/month doesn't have KW Explorer access, but the other levels - at $149/month and above, do (5,000+ queries/month).

You can read the blog post here for lots of details, but if you have questions or product suggestions, please don't hesitate to ask!

[randfish]

Hi Chris - yes! We know about this bug with the different tabs/windows and have a ticket in to the dev team to address. Thanks for the heads up.

[ChrisCK]

Hi Rand,

I want to report a bug with the Keyword Explorer regarding Search Locale.
My campaign search settings are set to:

Google - United States en-US (Default)
Google - United Kingdom en-UK

After entering a keyword search in Keyword Explorer I see the Overview with en-US metrics. When I click SERP Analysis with right-click "open a new tab" it incorrectly opens the SERP Analysis with the en-UK metric. I was confused to see why the metrics are different but finally figured out the bug. When I click SERP Analysis with left-click it opens the correct en-US page in the same window. While doing keyword research, I think it's quite natural to open multiple keywords on new tabs to research them one-by-one or to compare their data between the open tabs.

I'm using the latest Google Chrome Version 59.0.3071.86 on macOS Sierra 10.12.5.

Also, one other feature request would be to allow "open new tab in window" for the right-hand side magnifying icon in Keyword Lists.

Thanks,

Chris

PS: The line spacing in the WYSIWYG on the community forums is a bit weird.

[randfish]

Hi Marina - Moz and Google have different data -- we don't use exactly the same data sources as Google, so you should expect to see some differences in suggested keywords and in volume (Google makes an estimate, while we use a ranged bucket).

[robocip]

Hi!

Why I found very different results for the same key using Moz Keyword Explorer and Google Keyword planner... why?

For example the italian key:

"Cameretta bambina"

I'm interested in Italy country.

thank you,

Marina

[randfish]

Hi Augustus - I think there might have been a problem with your free trial signup. It looks like your account (at least the one associated with this profile) isn't in a free trial state according to the subscription data I see. If you email help@moz.com, they should be able to assist.

[Augustus_Piazza]

Hi

I just signed up for my 30 day trial, but the Keyword Explorer tool is not working.  I keep getting this message "Creating keyword list failed."  Am I able to use this tool during the trial period?

Thanks,

Augustus

[ATP]

Back to the old fashioned way it is then

Thanks for the reply

[randfish]

Hi ATP - we're working on getting the UK volume data (along with other countries) into KW Explorer, hopefully before we shut off KW Difficulty. I believe we may be extending that June 2nd deadline.

In the meantime, I'd recommend using AdWords' KW Tool and selecting "United Kingdom" in their country dropdown. KW Difficulty's data comes from there as well (via GrepWords).

[ATP]

Rand,

I am a UK user.

I just went onto the keyword difficulty page and it said it is being removed from June 2nd to be replaced by the keyword explorer tool. Whilst I welcome this change as I love the keyword explorer, as a UK user i rely on the keyword difficulty tool for volume metrics as they keyword explorer doesn't yet show these for the UK.

Why the haste to remove this tool? Its a vital part of the puzzle for me until the explorer is fully operational. Could it not stick around until the explorer is fully functional?

Thanks

[randfish]

Thanks! Check out https://moz.com/blog/can-seos-stop-worrying-keywords-focus-topics-whiteboard-friday for more info on exactly that topic. Basically, I'd suggest targeting all the keywords that target the same searcher intent together on a page, and split up any that have different intent/search goals to different pages.

[randfish]

Hi - thanks! Glad to hear it. As far as accuracy in the UK - the SERP data is accurate, but volume is still US-centric until we make some updates. Those should be happening relatively soon (next few months).

As far as UK vs. GB, I believe the rankings can be slightly different.

[Sigma_Digital]

Really loving the new tool, I have created keyword groups but I would like to know the accuracy especially in the UK.

When setting up a campaign there are options to monitor Google GB & Google UK, would using one or the other, or even both give different results for keywords?

[randfish]

Each keyword you add to a list does count toward the 300 limit (or whatever limit your account has). That's because for each, we need to do a SERP crawl to get the metrics and analysis.

If you upload a list with 100 keywords, we'll do a data fetch for each, and you'll have 200 queries remaining for the month.

[Page1SEO]

Hi Rand,

With uploading keyword lists, does each keyword on the list count towards your 300 queries/month list? Ex: If I upload a list with 100 keywords on it, will I then only have 200 queries left for the month? Or is it 300 independent queries, and 3 lists regardless of size?

Thanks!

[bhsiao]

I love the keyword tool for giving me direction and helping to prioritize. My question:

Once I have the prioritized keywords, do you recommend having a page for each of the top keywords, using the keyword as the page name? Or is it better to sprinkle the keywords into existing pages?

Thank you.

[randfish]

Unfortuntately, we don't have this feature yet in KW Explorer, but you can get it at SEMRush, Spyfu, Keycompete, Searchmetrics, and others. We hope to have this ability in the future.

[Krithikam]

how to see the organic keywords that a website uses?

[randfish]

Hi Mark - yes! If you're using the New Zealand select in the drop down for engines, those other scores should be accurate.

Cheers!

[SureFire]

Hi Rand

Love the new KE tool! Great job.

I'm in New Zealand and like others out of the States I also found myself puzzled by the keyword volume estimate, but makes sense now you've clarified these are currently US volumes.

Can you please confirm that, whilst we should ignore the keyword volume estimates for non-US markets, the difficulty and opportunity scores are still applicable outside the US?

Cheers, Mark

[Dr-Pete]

The new Difficulty score gets pretty aggressively scaled, because we found that the distribution of PA/DA was bunching up a bit, and fell almost entirely in the 25-85 range (looking across an entire SERP). So, a 25 gets scaled down to nearly zero, to give the new metric more granularity.

It looks like the CTR-adjusted PA for "Naturmode" on Google.de (for example) is right around 26, so it may be that the PAs have gone down a bit over time as well. Even by the non-weighted metric, I'd expect that to be a solid 10 points lower than the old difficulty score.

We're going to dig in and try to find out if the rescaling is too aggressive, once we have more data from real-world KWE usage. In general, though, you're going to see a bigger range of difficulty scores with the new metric. It's pretty tough to meaningfully compare the old and new scores.

[randfish]

Thanks @Chrwald - I'm going to ask Dr. Pete to take a look at these.

[chrwald]

Hi Rand,

thank you for the quick reply. After looking into the data again, it seems like I have exaggerated a tiny bit. Here are some examples. One of them is old kwd 38, new kwd 4, another one is old kwd 46, new kwd 6. Technically not "40+ to <5" but pretty close and bad enough.

ddzvs7vl.png

[randfish]

Hi Christian - can you send over some examples of Difficulty scores that were 40+ and are now <5. That seems very fishy and we can look into it.

In general, the new tool should be vastly more accurate and useful than the old one. Volume data in the old KW Difficulty tool comes from Grepwords, which we'll be using for non-US volume in the new tool as well, hopefully very soon, so you should see that fixed before the old KW Difficulty disappears.

[chrwald]

Hey Rand,

from your blogpost regarding the launch of keyword explorer I got, that you guys are planing to retire the old keyword-diffuculty tool in favor of the new kw-explorer. On the other hand it is stated in that post and here as well, that the new explorer is - and for at least some more month will be - US and english language-centric.

After fiddling with it for a while I get more then > 90% "no data" for volume and many of the new difficulty scores don't make much sense to me (e.g. difficulty scores of < 5 for terms that got a score over >40 in the old tool).

That leads me to two questions:

• If the new tool is more precise than the old one and the differences in scores are that big: Was it either a terrible idea to use the old scores for decission making in the first place? Or could it be, that the new tool has still some difficulties when it comes to non-english languages or non-us-searches?

• Related to this: Why retire the old tool so quick if the new one is not an adequate alternative for folks like me yet?

Thanks, Christian

[randfish]

Yeah - some important things to keep in mind about volume in KWE:

1. It uses United States volume only right now (if you search by default in AdWords, you may be getting global search volume unless you choose "US")

2. It's modifying that data with actual clickstream numbers to give greater accuracy

3. It normalizes trend volume, so if Google has a big spike or dip, they'll show that one number, whereas KWE tries to estimate the monthly average data.

[Gyorgy.B]

Perfect, I can survive that. Thank you!

PS: the kw difficulty search volume is closer to AdWords than the explorer's US search volume. In a Q&A post I mentioned a head term search volume which has 6-9k searches in AdWords and the kw difficulty tool but 118-300k in kw explorer

[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.

[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?

[K3v1n]

Brilliant, thanks Rand

[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]

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]

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.

[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]

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

[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]

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).

[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]

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.

[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]

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.

[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.

[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!

[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!

[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.

[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]

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!

[randfish]

Yes! If you've got a high-level Moz Pro account, you'll get 15,000 queries per month. Go nuts!

[randfish]

Hi Stuart - in the search bar, on the right-hand side, there's a drop down to change the search engine. Unfortunately, volume data is for US only right now, but we're looking into expanding that over time.

[randfish]

If you're signing up for a new Moz Pro account at $99/month, it's only 5 queries/day. But, if you had a $99/month account before today, we've granted legacy access at 300 queries/month. At $149/month (or the $600/year standalone), you get 5,000 queries/month, and access goes up from there.