Do you want your site to attract the target audience? Then you definitely need to learn how to properly collect the semantic core – a set of relevant key phrases that users will use to find the resource in search engines. And the key role here plays a key role in analyzing the statistics of search queries.
But how to know the number of search queries for this or that keyword? For this purpose there are special services, collecting statistics from search engines. With their help you will not only analyze your niche and understand your target audience, but also collect the most frequent and low-competitive key phrases for your semantic core.
Why estimate the number of search queries?
The statistics obtained after evaluation shows how often and what exactly users are searching for. The data provided will help optimize the structure of the site and improve the position of existing pages. The higher the frequency of the query, the more potential visitors you will be able to attract. However, keep in mind that competition for high-frequency queries is usually greater.
In addition, if you look carefully at the statistics of search queries, you can find quite popular key phrases with relatively low competition in Google Ads, which will allow you to effectively set up contextual advertising, getting maximum conversions at minimum cost.
Data for different time periods allows you to determine whether the popularity of keywords changes depending on the season, holidays and other factors. In this way, you can identify growing trends and new topics that are starting to interest your target audience. With this in mind, you’ll be able to plan your content strategy by focusing on your audience’s core interests.
When do I need to know search query statistics?
You definitely need to know the statistics of queries when:
Creating and optimizing the structure of the site. In this case, statistics helps to determine which sections should be included in the structure to attract more search traffic. For example, you own an online flooring store, you have analyzed your competitors and found that they have added a new Tarkett laminate to the site, which is in high demand. If you do not have a corresponding category in your catalog – this is a clear signal to action.
Promotion on marketplaces and external sites. If you place goods on platforms like Prom.ua or Rozetka, you can significantly increase the visibility of your store pages on these resources due to the competent selection of semantic kernel and inclusion of popular keywords in the titles and descriptions of product cards.
Blogging. The collected statistics will tell you what topics and issues are interesting to your audience at this very moment. Perhaps you are missing some important trend in your topic, which will gather a lot of traffic and greatly increase the income from advertising. Or vice versa – you decided to write a new article, but when you analyze it you find that no one is interested in its topic. In this case, there is no point in wasting time and effort.
Setting up contextual advertising. When launching a campaign is very important preliminary analysis of the niche and competitors, which necessarily includes all relevant semantics on which the advertising will run. In this case, it is desirable to focus on transactional queries containing the words “buy”, “price”, “order”, which indicate the user’s readiness to buy.
Research the market and the needs of the audience. This way you will be able to understand your target audience much better – their pains, interests and preferences. This knowledge will help you adapt your product strategy and launch more effective marketing campaigns.
How can I see the statistics of Google search queries?
The easiest way to find out the number of search queries is to use tools from Google itself. The main ones are Keyword Planner, Google Trends and Analytics.
This service is built into the Google Ads advertising cabinet. To start working with it, you will need to create an advertiser profile in the service. At the same time, it is not necessary to launch a campaign to access the statistics – it will be opened immediately after registration.
To access it, go to the “Tools” menu and select “Keyword Planner” from the list:
In the opened window specify one or several phrases at once (you can also load a ready list from a file). The service works in two modes:
Search for new queries
In this mode it is possible to get ideas of promising keywords that will help to attract more targeted traffic to the site. To get information in the window that opens, enter up to 10 phrases that are closely related to the topic of your online resource and specify the target region. To get more accurate results, you can also add the URL of the desired site.
In the results, you will get a table with the parameters of the proposed query. Among them:
Frequency. It indicates whether the selected query is popular in the specified region, whether people are searching for it, and, if so, how many times per month.
Dynamics of changes in the number of queries for the past quarter and the last 12 months.
The level of competition for the key phrase. The higher it is, the more overheated will be the auction on the selected query. Accordingly, the cost per click will also increase. Competition is low, medium and high).
The bid for impressions above the search box. Displays the real cost that advertisers pay to have their ad displayed at the top of the page. A high bid indicates the popularity of a keyword and increased competition for it.
The scheduler also allows you to filter the results. For example, you can filter out queries that are too competitive or exclude variants with low search frequency, high cost-per-click, etc.
Frequency View and Predictions
This mode allows you to get a detailed summary of your existing word list instead of collecting new semantics. To get the results, simply upload your list or add a file and click “Start”.
Unlike the previous mode, here you won’t see any suggestions on how to expand your semantic core. Instead, you can find out the average number of key phrase impressions per month, competition and other data on the ready list.
In addition, here you can analyze the dynamics of changes in various indicators over time. To do this, simply click on the graph next to the average number of requests. This information will allow you to find out whether the demand fluctuates depending on the season, and to understand how stable the interest of users in a particular topic is.
Another useful feature is the forecast of campaign effectiveness. On the corresponding tab you will find information about the potential number of conversions, expected impressions, possible expenses, CTR and cost per click. For the convenience of further work, the “Planner” gives you the opportunity to upload the collected data in CSV format or to Google Tables.
Google Trends
This is a service that shows the latest search trends with convenient filtering by time period, platform and region. With its help, you can find not only commercial queries, but also find out what is currently on the rumor mill – what movies are popular this year, what TV series have appeared, what music album has garnered the most listens, etc.
The interface includes four sections – “Subscriptions”, “Queries”, “Year in Search” and “Analysis”. The last one is of the greatest interest to us, as it allows us to learn about the popularity of individual queries.
To get started, enter the phrase you are interested in into the search bar. Google Trends also allows you to get more specific statistics by specifying your search country (you can also select the whole world or a specific region), time period (data since 2004 is available with time intervals from 1 hour to 5 years), category and type of content searched for (query, image, news, product or video).
Google Analytics
This tool does not allow you to directly collect a semantic kernel or find out the popularity of keywords. However, it allows you to assess the quality of queries already used in advertising campaigns or traffic coming to the site. By working with data on the number of conversions, impressions, clickability and average position for given phrases, you can determine how well your advertising campaign is set up and what points of growth there are.
To access this valuable information, go to “Traffic Sources”, then find “Search Console”. Inside this menu, you need to select the “Queries” sub-item. Note that the data appears with a delay of 1-2 days, so don’t be surprised if the latest information is not available.
How can I find out Bing search query statistics?
Bing is the second most popular search engine in the world after Google, developed by Microsoft. Despite the fact that Bing processes only about 7% of global queries (as much as 25% in the US), it also provides valuable statistics for marketers, optimizers and website owners.
To find out keyword statistics on Bing, you need to register an account with Microsoft Advertising. After registration, go to the Tools section and click Keyword Planner. It offers two main options:
Search for new keywords
This section helps you find promising queries that are most suitable for attracting the target audience in a given topic. Here it is enough to enter a phrase describing the niche or product, and if desired, specify a link to the landing page to narrow the list of keywords to the most relevant options.
Next, you need to set more detailed parameters – language (Russian is not supported at the moment), geolocation, period for which statistics will be displayed, etc. Filters can be used to filter out low-frequency queries and display only variants with low competition.
After setting all the parameters, click on the “Get suggestions” button. The results you get will contain a detailed summary of the keyword, including its popularity, current level of competition, recommended bid, and a list of similar phrases.
Viewing the number of queries
The second section allows you to view the number of user requests and the forecast of impressions when launching an advertising campaign. Here you need to enter a list of words of interest in the corresponding window.
Then select “Get search volume” to get the results. The report will contain the same data as the previous one, with the only difference – the statistics will be presented only for the downloaded list of queries.
What other services help to know the number of search queries?
In addition to internal tools from the largest search engines, there are many third-party services, including paid ones, that allow you to see the number of search queries.
They simplify the process of working with statistical data, enable mass uploading, provide additional information and much more. Let’s take a look at the most popular programs and web platforms that can be used for this purpose.
Key Collector
This is the most popular desktop program for working with semantics. The built-in functionality collects phrases from more than 20 different sources (including popular search engines) and structures the data by a variety of parameters in a convenient tabular format.
The filtering function allows you to clear the selection from irrelevant and repetitive phrases, special characters, numbers, as well as to remove unnecessary words describing secondary characteristics of products (for example, “the most”, “new”, etc.). In addition, you can upload your own list of minus words for further cleaning of the resulting semantic core.
Note that this is a paid tool, but the license is purchased once and is valid indefinitely, without the need for monthly renewal. Also, when you purchase a subscription, you are entitled to unlimited updates as soon as they appear on the official website of the developers.
Ahrefs
This is the most popular cloud service for SEO-specialists. However, there is also a lot of useful functionality for contextologists. Ahrefs’ built-in Keywords Explorer tool pulls up the frequency of queries not only from Google, but also from Amazon, YouTube, Bing, and so on.
This service boasts the largest database of keyword phrases, if you don’t count internal search engine tools. It allows you to get forecasts on the number of clicks on a particular query from a third-party source. In addition, Ahrefs provides historical data on positions in the issue, the number of backlinks to this or that site, and much more.
This tool is paid. The user can activate one of three plans, each of which gives access to different sets of functions. The cost of the minimum plan is $99 per month. A nice bonus is two free months if you pay for an annual subscription.
Keyword Tool
Keyword Tool pulls search hints from Google to generate hundreds of semantically similar phrases. If it is impossible to copy the cues in the search engine output itself, here they are provided in a convenient tabular format, immediately with the actual frequency and competition.
The tool supports 83 languages and supports both free and paid versions. In the free version, you will only see a list of keywords without frequency statistics (you will have to check it manually separately). Paid tariffs (basic and professional) remove these limitations and provide more advanced functionality.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking provides an opportunity to evaluate the prospects of promotion for the selected phrases, both in organic and paid rendition, and to understand what competitors will have to fight for top positions.
Thanks to this data, you will be able to understand how realistic it is to bring your site to the top and what budget should be laid on contextual advertising. Although SE Ranking is paid, a free trial period is available to test the functionality.
SEMrush
The built-in Keyword Overview section is based on an extensive database of over 20 million keyword phrases in various languages. With its help, you can collect semantics using competitors’ sites or similar queries.
SEMrush will also help you estimate the complexity of promotion, cost per click, search volume, and much more. There are three pricing plans available here, for each of which you can activate a free 14-day trial period. To do this, you will need to create a new account and link your payment card to it.
SerpStat
Here you can find missing phrases for which your site is not yet ranked, compare the popularity of queries, analyze phrases used by competitors in SEO and PPC advertising.
SerpStat helps you filter statistics by search volume, clean semantics from words with spelling errors, Latin letters in Cyrillic words, track competition, seasonality.
Ubersuggest
This is the most inexpensive service of all those presented in the review. Besides, in addition to standard monthly tariffs, here you can get a lifetime subscription with a one-time payment.
The functionality presented here is very similar. However, keep in mind that due to the lower cost, accuracy in Ubersuggest may not be as high as in more expensive solutions, and the database may be less complete.
How to improve accuracy when analyzing keywords?
Use operators. For example, if you enclose a phrase in quotation marks (“buy a coat”), you will get a summary of this exact phrase only, without taking into account additional qualifiers like “red”, “winter”, etc. If you put a plus in front of a word, the system will show only variants containing that word, while a minus – on the contrary, it will exclude them.
Always specify the region and time period for which you need statistics. Trends may differ significantly by region and change over time. What is relevant for Kyiv today may not be relevant for Ivano-Frankivsk or may change in six months.
Take into account the order. Services usually produce different data for queries with the same words, but in different order. For example, the frequency and rates for “order laptop on macOS” and “laptop on macOS order” are likely to be different for both exact and phrase matches.
Finally, don’t rely on just one platform. Use several, and compare their performance. It is also useful to analyze results over time, tracking changes in various indicators over time.
