This wasn’t the first time we’ve been criticized for the accuracy of our search volume metrics.
But here’s the kicker…
There is NOTHING OF THE KIND as accurate search volume:
- Volumes in Google Keyword Planner are not accurate.
- The “Impressions” in GSC are also not accurate.
- And the metric itself is just an average of past data.
I already published a pretty detailed article about search volume metrics in 2021. But I don’t think many people have read it.
“Everything that needed to be said has already been said. But since no one listened, everything had to be said again.”
So let me approach this topic from a completely new perspective.
First of all, what do SEOs mean when they ask for search volumes to be “accurate”?
Well, less experienced people simply want the metrics in third-party tools to match what they see in Google Keyword Planner (GKP).
But the most experienced already know everything The Dirty Secrets of Google Keyword Planner:
- Numbers are rounded annual averages.
- These averages are then assigned to “volume categories”.
- Keywords with similar meaning are often grouped together and their search volume summarized.
In other words, the search volume numbers you see in GKP are very inaccurate. And once SEOs learn this, they no longer use GKP as a basis for accuracy.
They use GSC.
OK. So the numbers in GKP are rounded and grouped and grouped together and all that. But Google Search Console (GSC) shows you the actual impressions for a particular keyword, right?
Well, did you know that a simple ranking tracking tool can easily pollute your GSC impressions?
Think about how many different “robots” could scrape the search results for a given keyword, and thus give you a fairly inaccurate impression of its actual (human-driven) search volume.
Additionally, to see actual monthly search volume, your page must rank in the top 10 for thirty consecutive days. And it should rank nationally, in case search results may differ by location.
Beyond that, I’m sure that GSC is no different than any other analytics tool in the sense that it may have some discrepancies in “counting” such impressions. I mean, compare the “clicks” you see reported by GSC with your server’s log files. I bet the numbers don’t match.
How much time do you think would pass between selecting a certain keyword to rank for and actually ranking your page at the top of Google?
This is actually the exact reason why we added search volume prediction to our Keyword Explorer tool. Use past data to predict what might happen to search volume over the next 12 months:
Is it accurate? NO.
But does it help simplify your keyword research and make better decisions? Absolutely.
Let’s do a thought experiment and imagine that there is an SEO tool that can give you highly accurate search volume for any keyword. What would you use it for? Would you be able to accurately predict the search traffic resulting from that keyword?
NO!
You can’t know for sure where your page will end up ranking. Today it’s number 3, tomorrow it’s number 5, the next day it’s number 1. Rankings are volatile and you rarely hold a certain position for a long enough period of time.
And even if you did: You can’t get accurate data on the click-through rate (CTR) of each position on Google. Every SERP is unique and Google continues to implement more and more click-stealing SERP features. So even if I knew precisely the search volume of a keyword and the Exactly location where your page would be located… you still wouldn’t be able to calculate the precise amount of search traffic you’ll get.
And finally…
Pages don’t rank for a single keyword! Seven years ago we published a study showing that a typical page that ranks high in Google for a few keywords would actually rank for about a thousand related keywords.
So what’s the point of trying to evaluate clicks from a single keyword, when you’ll end up ranking for thousands of them all at once?
And the result of all this is…
Here at Ahrefs we put a huge amount of time, effort and resources into making sure our keyword database is in good shape, both in terms of coverage of existing search queries, and in terms of the SEO metrics we provide you for each of these keywords.
However, none of our SEO metrics are “accurate”. Not search volume, either keyword difficulty, nor traffic potential, anything.
But none of them can be.
They are designed to be “directionally accurate”. They give you a general idea of the search demand for a particular keyword and whether it is much higher (or lower) than other keywords you are considering.
It is not possible to use these parameters to perform precise calculations.
But hundreds of thousands of SEO professionals around the world use these exact metrics to guide their SEO strategies and get exactly the results they expect.