Keyword Research — Real Data from Google, YouTube, Bing & More
Uncover search volume, difficulty, intent and content ideas in seconds. Pull real data across the platforms your customers actually search on — then export, save and build content briefs with AI.
- Google Ads volume data
- 4 search platforms
- No card required
A free keyword research tool built on real search data
Keyword research is the decision that quietly settles whether a piece of content succeeds. Everything downstream — the angle, the format, the headings, the internal links, the offer you put at the bottom — is a bet on what someone typed into a search box.
Get that input wrong and the best-written article on your site will sit on page four, correctly ranked for a query nobody makes. Get it right and an ordinary page can outrank a much stronger competitor, because it is the only one that answers the question as asked.
Keyword Research Pro is a free keyword research tool that starts from one seed keyword and returns the things you actually need to make that decision: monthly search volume, a 0-100 difficulty score, the search intent behind each phrase, and the long-tail variations that carry far less competition. It runs across four search surfaces rather than one — Google, YouTube, Bing and Etsy — because the query your customer types on YouTube is rarely the query they type on Google, and a strategy built only on Google data leaves the rest of the demand invisible.
Built by people who use it
It is built by Arb Digital's SEO team, who use it on client work daily. That shapes what is in it. There is no vanity metric here, no invented authority score, and no number produced by a language model. Where a figure comes from Google Ads, we say so. Where a suggestion comes from a platform's own autocomplete, we say that too.
Everything You Need to Rank
One tool, real data, six ways to win the keyword game.
Search Volume Estimates
Real monthly search volume pulled straight from the source platform — not a generic estimate.
Keyword Difficulty
A 0–100 difficulty score so you know exactly which keywords are winnable right now.
Search Intent Tagging (AI)
Every keyword auto-tagged Informational, Commercial or Transactional so you target the right pages.
Related & Long-Tail Keywords
Hundreds of related and long-tail variations surfaced automatically from one seed keyword.
Content Brief Generator (AI)
Turn any keyword into a ready-to-write content brief — headings, questions to answer, target length.
CSV / Excel Export
Export full keyword lists to CSV or Excel for your content calendar, client reports or team.
See It In Action
A preview of the kind of results table you'll get for any seed keyword.
| Keyword | Volume | Difficulty | Intent | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| digital marketing agency | 18,100 | 78 | Commercial | 📈 |
| best digital marketing agency near me | 2,900 | 52 | Transactional | 📈 |
| what does a digital marketing agency do | 4,400 | 24 | Informational | ➖ |
| digital marketing agency pricing | 1,300 | 45 | Commercial | 📈 |
| small business digital marketing agency | 880 | 31 | Transactional | 📈 |
| digital marketing agency vs freelancer | 590 | 66 | Informational | 📉 |
Sign up to see all 1,248 keywords
Keyword Research Works Differently on Every Platform
Same seed keyword, five very different search behaviours. Most keyword tools are Google tools with other logos bolted on. That is a problem, because search intent is shaped by what the platform is for.
Someone typing into YouTube expects to be shown something; someone typing into Etsy expects to buy something; someone typing into Google may want either. Below is how the strategy changes on each surface, and how to use the platform tabs above to research it.
Google — the intent-led surface
Google carries the widest mix of intent, which is both the opportunity and the trap. A single seed keyword will return informational questions, comparison queries, buying queries and brand searches side by side, and they need entirely different pages. Use the Google tab for the core map of a topic: run your seed, sort by difficulty ascending, and look for the cluster of question keywords sitting under 30. Those are usually the fastest wins for a site without much authority, and they build the topical coverage that later makes the harder commercial terms reachable.
Two things worth knowing about Google volume data. First, it is a rounded monthly average drawn from the same Google Ads ranges every tool uses — the numbers move in bands, not in single digits. Second, seasonality hides inside the average, so a term that reads as 1,000 a month may be 6,000 in November and near zero in June. Google's own Trends is the right cross-check before you commit a quarter of your content calendar to a seasonal term, and Google's SEO Starter Guide remains the clearest statement of what it expects from the page you eventually publish.
YouTube — phrasing beats volume
YouTube publishes no keyword tool of its own. The only first-party route to that data is Google Ads Keyword Planner, which requires an advertising account and still reports Google search rather than YouTube search. That gap is why the YouTube tab exists: it reads YouTube's own search suggestions, so you see the phrasing viewers type rather than the phrasing they would use on the web.
The strategic difference is that YouTube rewards title and topic match far more than exact volume. Queries skew toward doing and seeing — "how to", "review", "vs", "step by step", "tutorial", "for beginners" — and a video that matches that phrasing in its title and first sentence tends to win against a better-produced video that does not. Use the YouTube tab before you script, not after you upload. Pull the suggestion list for your topic, pick the phrasing with the clearest doing-intent, and let it set the title. Google's own documentation on how YouTube surfaces videos is worth reading alongside it.
Bing — smaller pool, cheaper competition
Bing is routinely dismissed and routinely underestimated. Its share is a fraction of Google's, but it is concentrated in desktop, in corporate environments where it is the default, and in older demographics — which for plenty of B2B and high-ticket consumer businesses is precisely the buying audience. Competition for the same terms is materially lower, so a page that stalls on page two of Google will often already be on page one of Bing.
Use the Bing tab as a check rather than a separate strategy. Run the same seed you ran on Google and compare the suggestion sets: where Bing surfaces phrasing Google does not, that is usually a query your competitors have not written for. Bing's Webmaster Tools keyword research documentation explains how it treats those signals on its side.
Etsy — buyers describing objects
Etsy search is not really search in the Google sense. There is almost no informational intent; nearly every query is someone describing a physical thing they intend to buy, usually with attributes attached — material, occasion, recipient, colour, size, style. "Personalised leather journal for dad" is a complete purchase brief, not a research query.
That changes what a good keyword looks like. On Etsy, the long tail is not a compromise, it is the whole game: broad terms are dominated by established shops, while attribute-heavy phrases convert far better and are winnable immediately. Use the Etsy tab to expand your product type into those attribute combinations, then feed the strongest into your listing titles and tags. If you also sell off-platform, pair it with our ecommerce SEO work, because the same attribute phrasing usually earns Google product rankings too.
📦 Amazon — coming soon
Amazon keyword data is on the roadmap and is not live yet. Amazon's search data is only available through a paid API we have not wired up, and rather than fill the gap with modelled numbers we have left the tab marked coming soon. When it ships it will work the same way as the others: real suggestion data from the platform itself, or nothing. In the meantime, Etsy and Google long-tail data is a reasonable proxy for how product-attribute search behaves.
What the Metrics Actually Mean
Volume, difficulty and intent — and how to weigh them against each other.
Search volume
Search volume is the average number of times a query is searched per month, smoothed over the preceding twelve months. It is not a live counter and it is not precise, and any tool presenting it to the nearest unit is presenting false confidence. Read it as an order of magnitude. The difference between 200 and 20,000 searches is a real strategic difference worth planning around; the difference between 480 and 520 is noise you should ignore.
Volume is also the metric most likely to mislead you on its own. A 20,000-search head term that you cannot rank for is worth nothing, and ten 200-search long-tail terms you can win outright are worth considerably more than one you cannot. High volume is a reason to be interested, never a reason to commit.
Keyword difficulty
Keyword difficulty is a 0-100 estimate of how hard the first page would be to reach, derived from the strength of the pages currently ranking. It is comparative, not absolute: 40 is easy for a site with years of links behind it and unreachable for a domain that launched last month. The right way to calibrate is to look up two or three keywords you already rank for and note their difficulty — that number is roughly your current ceiling, and anything meaningfully above it is a project rather than an article.
As a working guide: under 20 is realistic for new sites, 20-40 becomes reachable after six to twelve months of consistent publishing and links, and above 40 assumes established authority. If you want a grounded read on where your own site currently sits, run it through our AI website audit first — difficulty scores mean far more when you know your own baseline.
Search intent
Intent is the metric that decides the page type, and getting it wrong is the most expensive error in keyword research because no amount of writing quality recovers from it. Every keyword here is auto-tagged into one of four categories:
- Informational — the searcher wants to understand something ("what is keyword difficulty"). Answer with a guide or explainer. Selling here loses.
- Commercial — the searcher is comparing before deciding ("best free keyword research tool", "x vs y"). Answer with comparisons, reviews and honest trade-offs.
- Transactional — the searcher is ready to act ("hire seo agency", "buy leather journal"). Answer with a service or product page, priced and with a clear next step.
- Navigational — the searcher wants a specific brand or page. Rarely worth targeting unless the brand is yours.
The practical rule
Intent outranks both other metrics. Given a choice between a high-volume keyword whose intent does not match the page you can build and a smaller one that matches exactly, take the match every time. Our guide to writing a blog post that ranks covers how to turn each intent type into an actual page structure.
How to Do Keyword Research, Step by Step
The process our own SEO team runs, using this tool.
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1
Start with two or three seed keywords
A seed is the plainest possible description of what you do — "keyword research tool", "leather journal", "emergency plumber". Resist the urge to be clever; seeds are meant to be broad, because the expansion step is what finds the specific phrases. Two or three seeds is plenty for a first pass.
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2
Expand into the long tail
Run each seed on the platform your audience actually uses and let it expand into hundreds of related and long-tail variations. This is where the value is: the four-word-and-longer queries carry less volume individually but far clearer intent, less competition, and much higher conversion. A list of 800 variations from one seed is normal.
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3
Filter by difficulty against your own authority
Cut everything above your realistic ceiling. This single step is what separates a content plan that produces traffic from one that produces a year of invisible articles. Be ruthless here — the keywords you delete cost you nothing, and the ones you keep are the ones you will actually write.
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4
Group what remains by intent
Sort the surviving keywords into informational, commercial and transactional buckets. Each bucket becomes a different kind of page. Related phrasings of the same intent belong on one page, not several — search engines already understand that "keyword difficulty" and "what is a good KD score" are the same question, and splitting them creates two weak pages instead of one strong one.
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5
Pick one primary keyword per page
Assign a single primary keyword to each planned page, with its close variants as supporting terms. Write the title and the H1 around the primary, and let the variants appear naturally in the body. If two planned pages want the same primary keyword, merge them.
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6
Export and turn it into a calendar
Export the filtered, grouped list to CSV or Excel and sort it into a publishing order — easiest and highest-intent first, so the early wins fund the patience the harder terms require. From there, the AI content brief generator will turn any individual keyword into headings, the questions the page must answer, and a target length.
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7
Publish, then re-check
Keyword research is not a one-off exercise. Difficulty shifts as competitors publish, volume shifts with seasonality, and your own ceiling rises as you build authority. Re-run your core seeds quarterly. For the fuller version of this process, including how to validate a keyword against the live SERP before committing, see our 7-step keyword research guide and the wider SEO strategy guide. If you also run paid search, our explainer on negative keywords covers the other half of the same list.
Built for People Who Publish
Bloggers & Content Teams
Find the low-difficulty questions your topic already gets asked, and build a calendar you can actually rank for rather than one built on guesswork.
Ecommerce & Etsy Sellers
Research the attribute-heavy phrasing buyers use for products like yours, then apply it to listing titles, tags and category pages.
YouTubers & Video Marketers
See real YouTube search suggestions before you script, so the title matches the way viewers search instead of the way you'd describe it.
Agencies & Freelancers
Run research across multiple client niches and export clean, presentable keyword lists straight into reports and proposals.
Local Businesses
Uncover the "near me" and service-plus-city phrasing that drives local enquiries, then pair it with a proper local SEO setup.
Startups & Founders
Validate that there is real search demand for the problem you solve before committing a budget to content marketing.
Real Data, Not AI-Guessed Numbers
It is worth being plain about this, because a lot of newer keyword tools are not. Every number on this page comes from a real source.
Where every number comes from
- Volume & CPC. Search volume and cost-per-click data originate from the Google Ads Keyword Planner API.
- Suggestions. Keyword suggestions and long-tail expansions come from the search and autocomplete endpoints of the platform you selected — Google, YouTube, Bing or Etsy — which is to say from those platforms' own record of what people type.
- Difficulty. Difficulty is computed from the live search results for the query, not asserted.
AI is used, but only where it belongs: clustering hundreds of raw keywords into coherent topic groups, tagging each one by search intent, and drafting content briefs once you have chosen a keyword. It is never used to invent a search volume, a difficulty score or a trend line. If a language model produced a number, that number is a guess wearing a decimal point, and it will quietly wreck a content plan built on it.
The same principle runs through the rest of our free marketing tools and through the audit methodology we use on client work: measured where it can be measured, and clearly labelled where it cannot.
Choose Your Access
Start free, upgrade whenever you need more.
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword searches | Limited per day | Unlimited |
| Results view | View-only | Full access |
| CSV / Excel export | ✕ | ✓ |
| Saved keyword lists & projects | ✕ | ✓ |
| AI content brief generator | ✕ | ✓ |
| Content gap finder | ✕ | ✓ |
| Price | $0 | Coming soon |
Pro Plan — Coming Soon
Common Questions
How do I do keyword research?
Start with two or three seed keywords that describe what you sell or write about, expand them into hundreds of variations, then filter. Filtering is the part most people skip: cut anything whose difficulty is far above your current authority, group what is left by search intent, and pick one primary keyword per page. Everything after that is writing the page that answers the query better than the ones already ranking.
What is keyword difficulty?
Keyword difficulty is a 0-100 estimate of how hard it would be to reach the first page for a query, based on the strength of the pages already ranking for it. It is a comparative signal, not a physical constant — a difficulty of 40 is trivial for an established site and impossible for a domain launched last month. Read it relative to the keywords you already rank for.
What is a good keyword difficulty score to target?
If your site is new, live below 20. Between six and twelve months of consistent publishing, 20-40 becomes realistic. Above 40 you are competing with sites that have years of links behind them, and you should only go there once you already rank for the easier terms around the same topic.
How do I find long tail keywords?
Long tail keywords are the four-word-and-longer queries that carry lower volume and much clearer intent. Enter a broad seed keyword and the tool expands it using autocomplete and suggest data from the platform you selected, which surfaces the phrasing real people type rather than the phrasing marketers assume they type. Filter the result to low difficulty and you have a publishing queue.
What is the best free keyword research tool?
The honest answer is that it depends on where your audience searches. Most free tools only cover Google. This one covers Google, YouTube, Bing and Etsy from a single seed keyword, tags each result by intent and lets you export the list — which matters if you publish video, sell handmade goods, or serve an older, more desktop-heavy audience where Bing share is meaningfully higher.
Is this keyword research tool free?
Yes, it is free to start — core keyword research runs on a daily search limit with no card required. A Pro tier with unlimited searches, exports, saved projects and AI content briefs is coming; pricing has not been announced yet.
How accurate is keyword search volume data?
Volume figures are monthly averages, not live counters, and every tool on the market draws them from the same underlying Google Ads ranges. Treat them as order of magnitude: the difference between 200 and 20,000 searches is a real strategic difference, the difference between 480 and 520 is noise. We never generate volumes with AI.
Where does the keyword data come from?
Search volume and cost-per-click data originate from the Google Ads Keyword Planner API. Keyword suggestions and long-tail expansions come from the search and autocomplete endpoints of whichever platform you select, so they reflect what people actually type. AI is used only to cluster keywords, tag intent and draft content briefs — never to produce a number.
Why is Amazon keyword data not available yet?
Amazon search data is only available through a paid API we have not wired up, so the Amazon tab is marked coming soon rather than filled with modelled numbers. When it ships it will use real suggestion data from Amazon itself, on the same terms as the other platforms.
What is search intent and why does it matter?
Search intent is what the searcher actually wants: to learn something (informational), to compare options before buying (commercial), to buy or act now (transactional), or to reach a specific site (navigational). It matters because intent decides the page type. Publishing a guide against a transactional query, or a product page against an informational one, loses regardless of how well the page is written.
Does YouTube have its own keyword research tool?
No. YouTube publishes no keyword tool of its own, and the only first-party route to that data is Google Ads Keyword Planner, which requires an advertising account. That gap is exactly why the YouTube module here exists — it reads YouTube search suggestions directly, so you can see the phrasing viewers use before you title a video.
Start your keyword research now
Enter one seed keyword and see what your audience is really searching for across Google, YouTube, Bing and Etsy. It is free to start — no card, no trial countdown.
Research a keyword Work with our SEO team
Want the research done for you? Talk to Arb Digital about a full keyword and content strategy for your site.
