Searching for keywords and saving a list

Keyword research answers a phrase five ways, and a domain one way. It belongs to the workspace rather than to a project, so you can look something up before you have filed it under anything.

The five readings of a phrase

• Suggestions: phrases containing yours, which is the bulk of what a topic looks like.
• Questions: the same answer narrowed to the phrases that are questions.
• Clusters: those suggestions grouped, so a topic reads as a handful of themes rather than a hundred rows.
• Related: phrases the provider associates with yours without containing it.
• Rivals: who owns this topic, aggregated across the seed and its strongest suggestions rather than taken off one result page.

A keyword table shows at most 100 rows, with the volume, the difficulty band, the cost per click, the intent and the kinds of block the result page carries. Not every reading is that table: Clusters groups those keywords rather than listing them, and Rivals leads with a table of domains. A keyword row opens a live look at the results for that phrase, which is a paid call and says so.

The one reading of a domain

Search a domain instead and there are no tabs: one table of what that domain ranks for, with a position column and without the difficulty and intent columns, because “what does this site rank for” is a different question rather than a filter over the same answer.

What a search costs

A plan allows a number of searches a day, and the figure beside the form says how many you have used. A live look at one phrase counts as a search wherever it is asked, including from the worklist, because it is a request for an answer and it costs real money. Viewing a search you have already run again costs nothing and moves nothing: the answer is read from what was already paid for, and nothing goes upstream.

You rank, and tracking

When the market you searched is the current project’s, the table gains a column saying where that project’s own site ranks for each phrase according to its newest finished run, and the bulk bar offers to track the selection into that project. When the market differs, neither is offered and the page names the project’s own market, because a position measured in one country is not an answer for another.

Saved lists

A list is a set of keywords with the figures they carried when you added them, saved as they were measured rather than re-fetched on every view — so a list is a record of a decision rather than a live table. Lists belong to the workspace, a name is unique within it, and a list may be tied to a project or to nothing. A workspace may hold up to 50 lists of up to 500 keywords each.

A list outlives the project it was tied to: deleting the project leaves the list, untied. Deleting the list removes its items with it.