Find what people actually search. Before you write a word.

Type a phrase and the answer arrives as five readings of it. Suggestions are the phrases that contain yours; Questions are the ones that open interrogatively; Clusters are the same suggestions grouped by the phrase they share; Related is what people search next; and Rivals is the domains that keep coming up across the whole topic rather than on one result page. Suggestions, Questions and Clusters are three readings of one answer, so moving between them asks nothing further and costs nothing.

Every row carries the search volume, the difficulty of ranking as a band rather than a bare score, the cost per click, the intent the provider reports for the phrase, and a twelve-month line of monthly volumes. You can also search a domain instead of a phrase, which returns what that site already ranks for, with its positions.

The search volume is a twelve-month average. Every tool in this category shows this number as "monthly searches"; it is a mean over the trailing year, so a phrase with a season reads nothing like its own December. The figure for the phrase you searched is labelled as the average it is — the column of them is headed Volume and is the same measurement — and the twelve-month line beside each row is what tells you which kind of phrase you are looking at.

The row cap

One search shows at most 100 rows. The answer is ordered by volume, so what the cap leaves out is the long tail rather than the part you were looking for — and it is a cap on one answer, not on how many phrases you may ask about.

The Questions tab reads English openers

Questions is a filter over the Suggestions answer rather than a separate lookup, and the openers it filters on are English words: how, what, why, when, where, which, who, can, do, does, is, are, should. So a search in a market that is not English-speaking returns an empty Questions tab — not because nobody asks questions in that market, but because this filter cannot recognise them. The other four readings are unaffected, and the page says so rather than leaving you to guess.

The live check is a live check

A row’s live check fetches the current search results for that phrase. It is a real lookup, so it counts as one of the day’s searches and the page reloads with the result below the table — it is not a free preview that opens in place.

A selection of rows saves to a keyword list, which belongs to the workspace and holds up to 500 keywords. A list stores each keyword’s figures as they were when you added it and never asks for them again, so opening one costs nothing and the numbers in it are dated rather than live.

When the market you searched is the market one of your projects measures, the table gains a column saying where that project already ranks for each phrase, and the bulk bar offers to add a selection to its rank tracker. Search a different market and it offers neither, and names the market the project is in so you know which one to switch to.