Monthly Volume

What’s Covered?

In this guide you will learn more about the Monthly Volume metric seen in Keyword Explorer.

Quick Links

• Overview of the Monthly Volume Metric
• The Nitty Gritty Details
• What’s a good score?

You will see the Monthly Volume for a keyword noted in the Explore by Keyword and Explore by Site sections of Keyword Explorer as well as within your Keyword Lists. This metric is also used throughout Moz Pro Campaigns.

Monthly Volume shows the number of searches for that keyword for any given month. This is an indication of demand for that keyword. When searching for keywords data for Google US, CA, AU, and UK you will have the option to view Monthly Volume in Keyword Suggestions, Keyword Lists, and Ranking Keywords as either a single number or a range.

Monthly search volume shows you how often a term or phrase is searched for in Google each month. It is calculated by taking an average of the search volumes of the last 12 months, to account for seasonal fluctuations.

When searching for keywords data for Google US, CA, AU, and UK you will have the option to view Monthly Volume in Keyword Suggestions, Keyword Lists, and Ranking Keywords as either a single number or a range.

Monthly volume expressed as a single number shows you a precise volume prediction. Viewing volume this way simplifies the keyword research process and gives you a single number, off of which to base your strategy and choices.

Volume ranges see less spikiness month to month than showing a single number. Some SEOs prefer using a minimum and maximum anticipated volume to inform their SEO strategy. You will have the option to toggle between a single number and ranges in the Keyword Explorer interface.

Why don't volume ranges match the figures in AdWords? Well, we found in our research that the volume provided in AdWords has significant drawbacks. While our keyword corpus for Keyword Explorer is large, it does not cover all keywords. If you see Data not available reported for a keyword's volume, it means we do not yet have volume information available for that keyword.

If you see Data not available, this means that we haven't yet collected data for this keyword. One way to verify if there is a small amount of search volume is to see if Google Suggest autofills it in when you type in the search box. If it does, that's usually a sign there's at least some volume (even if it's only a few searches a month.)

Ideally you’re looking for keywords with higher search volume, but be wary of keywords that also have high Difficulty. It's worth noting that lots of relevant keywords with low volume scores can also add up to strong traffic when combined.

• Learn more about Difficulty