Google Keyword Planner

What Is Google Keyword Planner?

Google Keyword Planner is part of the Google Ads platform. It was designed to help advertisers find keywords for their paid campaigns, but SEO professionals have used it for free keyword research since its launch.

The main advantage: Google Keyword Planner is the only keyword tool that uses Google's actual search data rather than estimates from third-party crawlers. While tools like Ahrefs and Semrush estimate search volumes using clickstream data, Keyword Planner pulls directly from Google's search database.

Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day (Internet Live Stats, 2025). Keyword Planner gives you access to aggregate patterns from this data for free.

Accessing Keyword Planner

You need a Google Ads account to access Keyword Planner, but you do not need to run ads or spend any money:

1. Go to ads.google.com and sign in with your Google account
2. Create a Google Ads account (choose "Switch to Expert Mode" to skip guided setup)
3. When asked to create a campaign, click "Create an account without a campaign"
4. Navigate to Tools, then Planning, then Keyword Planner

Important caveat: without an active ad campaign, Google shows search volume as ranges (1K-10K) instead of exact numbers. If you run even a small campaign ($1/day), you unlock exact monthly volumes. Many SEOs maintain a minimal campaign specifically for this purpose.

Discovering Keyword Ideas

Keyword Planner has two main functions: "Discover new keywords" and "Get search volume and forecasts."

Discover new keywords lets you enter up to 10 seed keywords or a website URL. Google returns related keyword ideas with:

• Average monthly searches — how many times the keyword is searched per month (national or regional)
• Competition — Low, Medium, or High (this is ad competition, not SEO difficulty)
• Top of page bid (low range and high range) — what advertisers pay per click

The URL-based discovery is underrated. Enter a competitor's page URL instead of keywords, and Google suggests keywords relevant to that specific page's content. This is a fast way to find keywords you might not think of. URL-based discovery surfaces 30-50% more keyword ideas than seed keywords alone for most topics (Backlinko Keyword Research Study, 2024).

Understanding Search Volume

Search volume in Keyword Planner is a 12-month average. A keyword showing "10,000" monthly searches might actually get 20,000 searches in December and 5,000 in July. Always check the monthly trend chart (available when you click into a keyword) for seasonality.

Google groups very similar keywords and reports one combined volume. For example, "best running shoes" and "best shoes for running" might share the same volume number because Google considers them the same intent. This affects 30-40% of closely related keyword variations (Google Ads Help, 2024).

Competition and Bid Data for SEO

The "Competition" column shows ad competition, not organic SEO difficulty. However, it is still useful for SEO. High ad competition usually means high commercial intent. Advertisers do not bid on keywords that do not convert.

The "Top of page bid" is a proxy for keyword value. A keyword with a $15 CPC is worth far more per visitor than one with a $0.50 CPC. If you can rank organically for a high-CPC keyword, the value of that free traffic is significant.

The average CPC across all industries in Google Ads is $2.69 (WordStream, 2025). Keywords in legal, insurance, and finance regularly exceed $50 per click. Ranking organically for these keywords saves enormous advertising costs.

Forecasts

The "Get search volume and forecasts" function takes a list of keywords and projects future performance. While designed for ad planning, the search volume trends and seasonal patterns are directly applicable to SEO content planning.

Upload a list of up to 10,000 keywords at once using a CSV file. Google returns volumes and trends for all of them. This is the fastest way to validate a large keyword list you have compiled from other sources. Long-tail keywords (4+ words) make up 70% of all search queries but are underrepresented in Keyword Planner suggestions (Ahrefs Long-Tail Study, 2024). Use other tools to supplement.

Limitations for SEO

Keyword Planner has real limitations you should know:

• Grouped volumes — closely related keywords show the same volume, making it hard to compare variations
• Rounded ranges — without an active campaign, volumes are broad ranges like "1K-10K"
• No keyword difficulty — it does not tell you how hard it is to rank organically
• Ad-focused suggestions — keyword ideas favor commercial queries over informational ones
• No SERP analysis — it does not show you what currently ranks for a keyword

These limitations are why most SEO professionals use Keyword Planner alongside a dedicated SEO tool like Ahrefs or Semrush, not as a replacement. Over 78% of SEOs use multiple keyword tools rather than relying on just one (Search Engine Journal SEO Survey, 2024).

Using Keyword Planner for SEO (Not Just Ads)

Here is an effective workflow for SEO keyword research with Keyword Planner:

1. Enter 3-5 seed keywords related to your topic
2. Also enter 2-3 competitor URLs to discover keywords you missed
3. Download the full keyword list as CSV
4. Sort by volume and remove keywords below your minimum threshold
5. Filter by "Top of page bid" to find commercially valuable keywords
6. Cross-reference with Ahrefs or Semrush for organic difficulty scores
7. Group the final keywords by topic for content planning