What does it mean when Moz KW explorer returns a negative keyword difficulty score (eg -2)?
-
I recently did a keyowrd difficulty lookup in Moz keyword explorer as usual and for the first time a saw several (out of 100s) of negative keyowrd scores (generally -2). Is this a bug, what does it mean?
-
Solved:
Open your Keywords List and select (check box) all of keywords that say, "unavailable." Click, ". . ." to expand menu and select, "Refresh."
-
We'd love to investigate this further for you. Can you please email help@moz.com with the specific examples of what you're seeing and we'll be happy to troubleshoot the issue further for you there. Thanks so much!
-
Are there any updates on this? I'm seeing the same for some keywords in my lists - "unavailable" in KW Explorer and "-2" when downloaded to spreadsheet. Thank you.
-
Well hello again! We'd love to investigate this further for you. Can you please email help@moz.com with the specific examples of what you're seeing and we'll be happy to troubleshoot the issue further for you there. Thanks so much!
-
The same thing has happened to me, on two VERY different search terms. I've figured out that in the software the KW Difficulty value shows that it's "unavailable", but when downloaded into a spreadsheet for some reason it shows up as "-2" instead of the word "unavailable.
-
Hi there! Kristina with Moz's Help Team here.
Can you please grab some screenshots and provide all of the details on the search you're running and shoot these over to our team by emailing help@moz.com and we'll be happy to take a look at this for you!
Thank you,
-Kristina -
I have never seen a keyword score lower than 1, even if you type in gibberish into the KWE, it should not show lower than one. There is a post Rand did on this- https://moz.com/community/q/what-is-a-good-keyword-difficulty-score. It may be worth checking out and commenting on there (with a screenshot if possible) to find out what is going on. I am thinking it may have just been a glitch and it would be worth trying to but in the KWE again if you can.
In the mean time, you could check the keyword phrase on Google Keyword Planner to see if you can get an idea of search volume for that keyword phrase, which should give you a general idea of if its highly search or not. Generally speaking the higher the search volume, the more difficult it will be to target.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Does Organic CTR from Keyword Explorer show percentage of 1st position clicks? If not, how to calculate?
I have two questions about the Organic CTR number from the Moz Keyword Explorer tool. I have read through the description here, but it is not very clear on what I need to know: https://moz.com/community/q/what-is-a-good-keyword-opportunity-score Does it calculate the percent of searchers that are likely to click on ANY of links from page one of the traditional organic search results? Or does it calculate the percent of searchers that are likely to click on the NUMBER 1 position of the traditional organic search results? I suspect the answer will be that it calculates the percentage of clicks for any of the traditional organic search results from page one. Which leads me to question two... I'm trying to calculate the estimated search traffic from each keyword if there was a number 1 ranking. And if the Organic CTR shows the percentage of clicks going to any of the traditional organic search results I need to add a modifier to my formula which will calculate how many clicks the number 1 ranking receives. So I think the formula would will look something like this: Monthly website traffic from keyword = monthly search traffic * Organic CTR * Number 1 Position CTR. In this case, what would I use for the "Number 1 Position CTR" modifier?
Moz Bar | | elementpaints0 -
Moz Crawl - 804 : HTTPS (SSL) error encountered when requesting page.
Got an issue sending a Crawl Request to https://www.usernamebuddy.com/ " "804 : HTTPS (SSL) error encountered when requesting page." I have tried to recrawl several times now same issue keeps occurring. I cannot see an error when I access the site am I missing something, if so how can I diagnose the issue and sort the problem? I have reviewed the source and cannot use any http: resources.
Moz Bar | | GrouchyKids0 -
GA snippets for subdomains and best tracking in MOZ
Hey there, I have a blog running at blog.URL.com. I need to add Google Analytics and I want to track the value of this subdomain as separate from the main URL. Can I do that? If I do a unique snippet in the header of the blog is that the right way to go? The main site is on an antiquated CMS system and will be converted over the next few months to a full on WP site, does that change anything long-term? Thanks in advance for your help. Cheers, Lisa
Moz Bar | | LisaBOS0 -
Keyword Difficulty Search Results: Can't tell which search engine
I ran a keyword difficulty search for 4 search engines: Switzerland in Italian, Switzerland in English, Switzerland in French and Switzerland in German. Now the results are in but it shows "Google.ch" for all of them so I can't tell which result is for which language. How can I check that? I ran the basic not full SERP.
Moz Bar | | WagMoreBarkLess0 -
Why Moz Rank tracker's results are different from results search in browser?
I would like to perform a competitor rank analysis in Google.gr . I have noticed that the results from the rank tracker for Google.gr are different than the results in Google.gr from a machine located in Greece with no Google account logged in. Could you inform me why such a behavior occurs?
Moz Bar | | thmavri0 -
Moz and Google Analytics Trouble?
Is anyone else having trouble connecting their MOZ Pro account to Google Analytics?
Moz Bar | | PhiladelphiaWebsiteSolutions0 -
Why does Moz Analytics drop my Google Analytics connection every time I login?
I get the following message every time I check the Moz Analytics dashboard on any of the sites I manage. It seems like a bug in the system. Does anyone know how to fix it? "We lost connection with your Google Analytics account. Don't worry — you won't lose any data. Please reauthorize now."
Moz Bar | | cbizzle0 -
Blocked Production Site from Search Engines - How to get it Crawled by Moz Crawler
I have an 'under development' site hosted, (which is an exact replica of live site as working on to add new functionalities & modules) - but its password protected, excluded from robots.txt (Disallow) & also marked noindex on all pages in the index - so that Googlebot & other Search Engines can not crawl the site At present the development work is almost 95% completed., Now - feel like to crawl the site through SEOMOZ Roger Bot - to know the errors and all indexed urls by Rogerbot. What's the best way to get Moz Bot crawl the site - but simultaneously continue it blocking its access to Search Engines I have gone through - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93708?hl=en, it says a) Save it in a password-protected directory. Googlebot and other spiders won't be able to access the content- But this way Moz will also not be able to crawl the site b) Use a robots.txt to control access to files and directories on your server - However it also says - It's important to note that even if you use a robots.txt file to block spiders from crawling content on your site, Google could discover it in other ways and add it to our index. c) Use a noindex meta tag to prevent content from appearing in our search results - It also says that a link to the page can still appear in their search results. Because we have to crawl your page in order to see the noindex tag, there's a small chance that Googlebot won't see and respect the noindex meta tag Password Protected thus seems the best way to continue blocking. However, continuing with it will also block Moz bot to crawl the site. Any suggestions Thanks
Moz Bar | | Modi0