Keyword Planner is not intended to tell us organic search volume.
“Keyword Planner is a tool that provides keyword ideas and traffic estimates to help you build a Search Network campaign.”
“Keyword Planner.” Google Ads Help, https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/3114286?hl=en. Accessed 10 January 2020.
Many search marketers mistakenly think Keyword Planner data is “good enough.”
But when you dig into the data the predicted search volume and suggested queries do not match up with what is actually happening in Google search results.
Why does the search volume in Google Ads Keyword Planner not match Google Search Console Impressions?
Because keyword planner displays a rounded average of how many times Google anticipates placing your Ad for a search query and it’s close match variants, not organic search volume.
Let’s take a look at keyword planner data to understand why search volume does not match organic impressions.
- Historical
Data is auto set to show the last 12 months (with a one month delay in data.)
As we know, the internet has incredibly sped up the fluctuations of trends.
You can imagine how political, economical and pop culture can quickly skew your data points.
- Buckets
MOZ reported on a massive data set in 2015 where they found Google uses around 85 different “buckets” for traffic, which are logarithmically proportional.
This means that long tail keywords might fall into buckets which only differ by 10–20 searches at a time.
While head tail keywords might see gaps of hundreds of thousands of searches per month.
- SERP Landscape
An additional factor to consider is the landscape of the SERP.
How many featured snippets, how many Ads, how many PAA, knowledge card, etc?
The search engine result page features will affect your organic click through rates.
Larkin SEO has a unique way of addressing organic keyword research.
By starting with market research and analyzing your best organic leads we are able to uncover more than generic data dumps from keyword research tools.