Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why is MOZ and Google search Volume so different?
-
A search term in MOZ shows the monthly search volume to be 49K. In Google, the same term shows the search volume at only 1300 monthly searches. Which do I trust?
Thanks,
Don
-
You've answered a question I've been searching for today so thanks Bryan.
Whilst I fully understand why Google does not allow Moz to access those figures, I cannot see the value in understanding solely Bing stats - I'll end up optimising our website for Bing and it's Google we need stats for. Is the Google Keyword Planner the same as Moz's keyword difficulty tool? What's the difference and benefits?
Thanks
Jason
-
Thanks Donna and Bryan.
I will check out Rand's article.
-
Totally agree Bryan.
-
Oh no question about that Donna!
To my knowledge there aren't any tools that can/will give exact figures. But in comparison to the Moz Keyword Analysis tool (which provides BING search results), using Google Keyword Planner is about as close as you can get to an "approximate" number.
All these tools do is provide us with an idea of what to focus on. Like Rand mentioned in his post (which is great)...
"THE IMPORTANT LESSON: Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase."
And then he goes on to recommend ways to address the challenge. FUN FUN FUN!
-
And even then, you have to be careful because Google lies by omission. Rand explains in this Moz Blog post dated February 14, 2012.
-
Absolutely!! Glad I could shed some insight on this for you.
But to answer your question, I would only use/trust Google's Keyword Planner especially since you can narrow it down to specific areas and get actual SPM data.
Have a great weekend and good luck with your project!
-
Yep! kind of crazy.
Well, thanks again. I guess we live with it.
I really appreciate your timely response.
-
Unfortunately yeah that's the deal man.
When I first saw what you are seeing I called into Moz and was like HEY!! What is this nonsense? That's when they dropped it on me that Google doesn't provide them that information.
So the only data you get that is actually from Google (even when you select the "Google" drop down option) is the Keyword Difficulty.
-
Hi Bryan,
So even though I selected Google using the drop down button, it really doesn't matter, I'll still get Bing results? I see the note at the top that you are referring to. If it doesn't use Google results I would think they would remove the selection for Google from the drop down selection.
Thanks for the input.
Thanks,
Don
-
Hey Don!
The reason is because Moz keyword tool pulls the SPM (searches per month) data from Bing unfortunately. Google doesn't allow Moz to access this info from their API.
If you notice up at the top of the column it actually states "BING Search Volume". I've added a screenshot to reference. Hope this helps!
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Mobile Rankings for me and competitors disappear in Moz but still ranking.
Hi, I'm trying to create an SEO report for my client however their mobile rankings have completely disappeared for Google Mobile rankings. Competitors rankings have disappeared as well. Could this be a Moz configuration issue?
Moz Pro | | baddjuju0 -
Moz Domain Authority [Megathread]
Hey Moz Community, We've noticed that there are questions about Domain Authority, what it is, and how to positively impact it. We're here to answer your questions! For a full overview, please see our help hub article here: https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain-authority First, it's important to keep in mind that Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). It is not a Google ranking factor. Domain Authority scores range from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater likelihood of ranking. Since DA is based on machine learning calculations, your site's score will often fluctuate as more, fewer, or different data points become available and are incorporated into those calculations. For instance, if facebook.com were to acquire a billion new links, every other site’s DA would drop relative to Facebook’s. Because more established and authoritative domains like Facebook will have increasingly larger link profiles, they take up more of the high-DA slots, leaving less room at the higher end of the scale for other domains with less robust link profiles. Therefore, it's significantly easier to grow your score from 20 to 30 than it is to grow it from 70 to 80. For this reason, it’s important to use Domain Authority as a comparative metric rather than an absolute one. The best way to influence your DA is to improve your overall site health with a focus on the quality and quantity of external links pointing to your site. Check out this video for more details on how to impact DA Happy analyzing!
Moz Pro | | HayleyBowyer0 -
MoZ vs SEMRush - Keyword Difficulty and Keyword With Low Competition.
Hi, My question is very focussed regarding these 2 tools. Is it correct to understand that MoZ tells keyword difficulty and not which keyword is easy to compete. And SEMRush tells which keyword is easy to compete but does not tell which keywords are difficult to compete? I mean one (Moz) misses the one part and the other (SEMRush) misses the other part. Hope some will enlighten me to the point. Best
Moz Pro | | Sequelmed0 -
Block Moz (or any other robot) from crawling pages with specific URLs
Hello! Moz reports that my site has around 380 duplicate page content. Most of them come from dynamic generated URLs that have some specific parameters. I have sorted this out for Google in webmaster tools (the new Google Search Console) by blocking the pages with these parameters. However, Moz is still reporting the same amount of duplicate content pages and, to stop it, I know I must use robots.txt. The trick is that, I don't want to block every page, but just the pages with specific parameters. I want to do this because among these 380 pages there are some other pages with no parameters (or different parameters) that I need to take care of. Basically, I need to clean this list to be able to use the feature properly in the future. I have read through Moz forums and found a few topics related to this, but there is no clear answer on how to block only pages with specific URLs. Therefore, I have done my research and come up with these lines for robots.txt: User-agent: dotbot
Moz Pro | | Blacktie
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 My questions: 1. Are the above lines correct and would block Moz (dotbot and rogerbot) from crawling only pages that have numberOfStars=0 parameter in their URLs, leaving other pages intact? 2. Do I need to have an empty line between the two groups? (I mean between "Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0" and "User-agent: rogerbot")? (or does it even matter?) I think this would help many people as there is no clear answer on how to block crawling only pages with specific URLs. Moreover, this should be valid for any robot out there. Thank you for your help!0 -
Meta Tag Descriptions not being found in Moz Crawls
Hey guys, I have been managing a few websites and have input them into Moz for crawl reports, etc. For a while I have noticed that we were getting a gratuitous amount of errors when it came to the number of missing meta tags. It was numbering in the 200's. The sites were in place before I got here and a lot of the older posts no one had even attempted to include tags, links of the page or anything. As they are all Wordpress Sites and they all already had the Yoast/Wordpress SEO plug-in installed on them, I decided I would go through each post and media file one at a time and update their meta tags via the plug in. I personally did this so I know that I added and saved each one, however the Moz crawl reports continue to show that we are missing roughly 200 meta tags. I've seen a huge drop off in 404 errors and stuff since I went through and double checked everything on the sites, however the meta tag errors persist. Is this the case that Moz is not recognizing the tags when it crawls because I used the Yoast Plugin? Or would you say that the plugin is the issue and I should find another way to add meta tags to the pages and posts on the site? My main concern is that if Moz is having issues crawling the sites, is Google also seeing the same thing? The URLS include:
Moz Pro | | MOZ.info
sundancevacationsblog.com
sundancevacationsnews.com
sundancevacationscharities.com Any help would be appreciated!0 -
Special Characters in URL & Google Search Engine (Index & Crawl)
G'd everyone, I need help with understanding how special characters impact SEO. Eg. é , ë ô in words Does anyone have good insights or reference material regarding the treatment of Special Characters by Google Search Engine? how Page Title / Meta Desc with Special Chars are being index & Crawl Best Practices when it comes to URLs - uses of Unicode, HTML entity references - when are where? any disadvantage using special characters Does special characters in URL have any impact on SEO performance & User search, experience. Thanks heaps, Amy
Moz Pro | | LabeliumUSA0 -
Google SERP count 100
I'm not finding a clear solution to getting 100 results in the Google SERP. I'm currently using Firefox as I use Chrome for being logged into Google (Gmail, Docs, etc.) I tried the Grease Monkey script, no luck. I tried appending the url with &num=100 (looks like that may have been killed in 2010 which may explain why the GM script isn't working). And it doesn't look like any toolbar, SEOMoz included has that functionality, any ideas or places to look? In addition, does anyone have a good SERP numbering tool? If I do a search and the first page, including Local & Organic has 15 results, when I click over to the 2nd page it starts back at #11, kind of defeats the purpose of using a numbering tool 😉 Any help would be appreciated. Thanks much!
Moz Pro | | nsauser0 -
How to fix problem with google analytics connection?
In the Organic Traffic Data Report I receive always the same message: "It appears there's a problem with our connection to your Google Analytics account. Please go to your Settings page to update your connection." In the settings I've choosen the correct Google Analytics Account with the correct profile. Thanks for any hints. Is it because using www. in the GA Profil but *.xyz.ch without www in the campaigns settings?
Moz Pro | | FlorianMuff760