Debug: upstream API calls (click to expand)
| Keyword | Search Volume |
Competition | Trend (12 mo) |
|---|
How it works
The Search Volume Checker takes a list of keywords and a country, and returns the average monthly search count, cost per click, advertiser competition score, and 12-month trend for each. Data comes from our Keywords Everywhere API, the same source the browser extension uses.
Two paths, one tool. Submissions of 500 keywords or fewer run synchronously (you wait, results arrive in a few seconds). Larger submissions queue and process asynchronously, with a progress bar; you can leave the page and come back via the share link. Your current plan allows up to 100 keywords per submission.
Country and currency. Volume is country-specific (a keyword can be 100x bigger in India than in the US for the same query) and CPC is currency-specific. You pick both up front; we send the right combination to the upstream API per submission.
Data source. The data source dropdown selects which upstream index supplies the numbers. The default is the one tuned for current Google data; alternative sources are useful when you're cross-checking against historical numbers or want a second opinion.
Paid plans pay their own credits. Free and anonymous visitors share a daily lookup budget pulled from a project-wide pool. Paid Keywords Everywhere plans (Bronze and above) get a larger daily budget AND pay only their own account's credits per lookup, which is why per-day caps for paid users are much higher than free.
Known limitations.
- Modeled volumes. No third-party tool has access to Google's internal search counts. All volumes are statistical estimates and should be read as "roughly X" not "exactly X".
- Per-keyword granularity. Search volume rounds aggressively at the long tail. A keyword reporting "0" or "10" might be a real niche term with sporadic searches; treat very low volumes as "approximately zero, but check if seasonality is hiding the signal."
- Trend smoothing. The 12-month sparkline is normalized for visual scale, not absolute volume. Use the big-chart modal (click any sparkline) for exact monthly values.
What the columns mean
- Keyword
- The exact search query you submitted, normalized to lowercase. Click any keyword to deep-link into our SERP Checker or Keyword Volume Checker for that keyword.
- Search Volume
- Average monthly search count for the keyword in the country you selected. A modeled estimate, not Google's internal count. Useful for comparing keywords against each other, less useful as an absolute number.
- CPC
- Cost per click as paid by advertisers in Google Ads, in the currency you selected. High CPC (above $5) usually signals high commercial intent on the keyword. Empty or zero means there's no advertising activity, which often correlates with informational rather than transactional intent.
- Competition
- Google's 0-1 score for how many advertisers are bidding for the keyword in Google Ads. Higher = more advertisers. A useful proxy for commercial competition. Not the same as organic ranking difficulty, but the two usually correlate.
- Trend (12 mo)
- Sparkline of monthly search volume over the past 12 months, height-normalized for visual scale. Click for a large interactive chart with exact monthly values and min/max/latest highlights. Use this to spot seasonality, declining topics, or one-off spikes that may have inflated the average.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check the search volume of a keyword?
Paste one or more keywords (one per line) into the box above, pick a country and currency, and click Check Volume. For each keyword we return the average monthly search count for the country you chose, the cost per click in Google Ads, the competition score, and a 12-month trend sparkline showing monthly volume history. Small submissions (under 500 keywords) run synchronously; larger ones queue and process in the background.
What is search volume in SEO?
Search volume is the average number of times per month a keyword is searched on Google. It's the single most important signal of how much organic traffic a keyword can plausibly send you. Volumes vary wildly by topic: a niche term might see 50 searches a month, a popular product 50,000, and a brand name millions. Search volume is reported per country, since the same keyword can be huge in one market and tiny in another.
Is a search volume of 10,000 a month high for a keyword?
It depends on the niche. For a specific local-business term ("plumber in Brooklyn"), 10,000 a month is enormous. For a generic ecommerce category ("running shoes"), 10,000 is mid-tier; the same keyword can be 100,000+ in volume in some markets. As a rough scale: under 100/month is long-tail, 100-1,000 is mid-tail, 1,000-10,000 is head, and 10,000+ is short-head competitive territory. Higher volume usually means more competition.
How accurate are search-volume tools?
Every search-volume tool (including ours) reports modeled monthly averages, not Google's internal counts. Volumes come from a mix of clickstream panels, third-party data, and statistical smoothing. Different tools will quote different numbers for the same keyword; ours come from the same upstream Keywords Everywhere has used for years. Treat volumes as directionally correct, not exact: "this keyword is ~10x bigger than that one" is reliable; "this keyword is exactly 8,124 searches" is not.
Why is search volume different in different countries?
The same keyword can have completely different demand in different markets. "Cricket" in India is roughly 100x the volume of "cricket" in the US. "Football" in the US means American football; in the UK it means soccer. Local language coverage also varies: a keyword in Spanish may show high volume in Mexico, Spain, and the US (large Spanish-speaking population) but near-zero in Australia. Always check volume in the specific market you're targeting.
How do I find search volume for free?
Use this tool. You can paste up to 100 keywords per submission on the Free plan with no signup required. Free and anonymous visitors share a daily lookup budget; paid Keywords Everywhere plans get a larger daily budget and pay only their own account's credits per lookup. Google's own Keyword Planner is technically free but requires an active Google Ads account and shows volume only as fuzzy ranges (e.g. "1K-10K") unless you're running paid campaigns.
What does the 12-month trend show?
The sparkline shows monthly search volume for the keyword over the past 12 months, normalized so the visual peak fills the bar height. It's useful for spotting seasonality (gift keywords spike in November/December, swimsuit terms peak in May/June), topics in decline (an ascending then-flat line is healthy; a declining line is a warning), and one-off news spikes that inflated the average. Click any sparkline for a larger interactive chart with exact monthly values.
What does CPC and Competition mean on a search-volume tool?
CPC (Cost Per Click) is what Google Ads advertisers pay on average when someone clicks their ad for that keyword. High CPCs (above $5-10) signal high commercial intent: people searching that keyword have wallets out. Competition is Google's 0-1 score for how many advertisers are bidding for the keyword in Google Ads. Both are paid-ad signals, not organic ranking-difficulty signals, but in practice high CPC and high competition correlate well with how hard the keyword is to rank for organically too.