Google Keyword Planner for SEO: what it shows and what it hides
·4 min read
Google Keyword Planner is the keyword tool inside Google Ads. It costs nothing to use, but you need a Google Ads account with billing set up to open it. It gives you two things, keyword ideas from a seed term or URL and search volume for a list you paste in. Every column was built for advertisers, so for SEO it is a rough volume source with gaps you have to know about.
How to access Google Keyword Planner
You open Keyword Planner from the Tools menu of a Google Ads account. Google's Keyword Planner help page says you have to finish account setup by entering billing information before you can use even the basic features.
You do not have to run a campaign. Google pushes new accounts into creating one during sign up, and it is easy to launch an ad by accident. Look for the option to skip campaign creation, finish billing, and then pause anything that got created along the way.
Discover new keywords vs Get search volume and forecasts
Keyword Planner has two entry points, and they answer different questions.
| Discover new keywords | Get search volume and forecasts | |
|---|---|---|
| You enter | Seed keywords, a website URL, or both | A list of keywords, pasted or uploaded as a CSV |
| You get | A list of related keyword ideas with volume, competition and bids | Historical metrics for your exact list, plus a forecast |
| Good for | Expanding a topic | Measuring a list you already have |
| SEO use | Idea mining, then filter hard | Rough volume for a shortlist |
Discover new keywords works best with a narrow seed. A seed like "shoes" returns thousands of loosely related ideas. "Trail running shoes for wide feet" returns something you can work with. Entering a competitor's URL shows the terms Google associates with that page, which is a cheap look at how Google reads it.
Get search volume and forecasts has two tabs. The Forecasts tab predicts clicks, impressions and conversions for a given ad budget. That tab is useless for SEO, because it models paid clicks at your bid, not organic traffic. Switch to the Historical metrics tab, which shows the volume figures.
What the Keyword Planner columns mean
Each column is defined in Google's Keyword Planner forecasts help, and the definitions matter more than the column names.
Avg. monthly searches
The average number of searches for the keyword and its close variants, averaged over 12 months by default, for the location and network you selected. It is an average, so a seasonal keyword shows a flat figure. Our search volume guide covers reading that number and checking it against Search Console.
Competition
Low, medium or high, based on how many advertisers showed on the keyword compared with all keywords on Google. It is about ads. It says nothing about how hard the organic results are, which our keyword difficulty guide explains.
Top of page bid, low and high range
Estimates of what advertisers have historically paid to show at the top of the page. Google describes the low range as roughly the 20th percentile and the high range as roughly the 80th. For SEO this is a useful signal of commercial value. A keyword where advertisers pay a lot per click usually comes from people ready to buy.
Three-month change and YoY change
How recent searches compare with earlier periods. Use them to spot rising topics that the 12-month average hides.
What Keyword Planner hides from SEO
Keyword Planner leaves out the parts of keyword research that matter most for organic search.
Low-spend accounts get ranges instead of numbers. Accounts with little or no ad spend usually see bands such as "1K to 10K" or "10K to 100K" in place of an exact average. Google does not publish the spend threshold. A band that wide cannot separate a keyword worth a page from one worth a paragraph.
Close variants are merged. Because volume covers the keyword and its close variants, "running shoe" and "running shoes" often return the same figure. Adding them together counts the same searches twice. The help page also notes that volumes are rounded.
Nothing measures organic difficulty. The Competition column measures advertisers, and a keyword can be "High" there while the organic results are thin forum threads.
Some keywords are missing. Google's help says keywords with very low volume, or ones it treats as sensitive, are not discoverable or forecastable. Long-tail phrases that send real organic traffic can be absent.
It shows nothing about the results page, so you never see who ranks, whether an AI Overview or a map pack sits above the links, or what search intent the results serve. You still have to search the keyword yourself.
Use Keyword Planner to compare keywords against each other inside one country. Do not use it to forecast organic clicks.
Check volume, difficulty and bids for a keyword list
Our keyword metrics tool fills the gaps that matter most for a list you already have. Paste up to 100 keywords, one per line, and pick a country. For each keyword it returns estimated monthly Google searches as a number rather than a band, a difficulty score from 0 to 100, search intent, cost per click, the top-of-page bid range and how searches changed over the last year. It then sorts the list into easy wins, blog topics and keywords worth bidding on, and lists keywords with no data separately.
A run costs 33 credits. The figures come from our keyword data and are estimates, so use them to rank keywords against each other. It does not find new keywords, track your rankings or read your Search Console data. For building the list first, see how to do keyword research.