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!
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
-
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 -
How long does Moz takes to update DA and PA value?
I used to work daily on my office website https://quintdaily.com/ and follow link building strategy. however, since more than 40-50 days, there is no movement in my DA, as the PA has just lifted up. However, there is no changes in Domain Authority so far. Besides, other than this website, im working on location wise SEO projects, but, i can find those websites Domain Authority changed in less 20 days. Is there is time period in changing the Domain Authority once it touched DA 30+?
Moz Pro | | seochris172 -
Difference between urls and referring urls?
Sorry, nit new to this side of SEO We recently discovered we have over 200 critical crawler issues on our site (mainly 4xx) We exported the CSV and it shows both a URL link and a referring URL. Both lead to a 'page not found' so I have two questions? What is the difference between a URL and a referring URL? What is the best practice/how do we fix this issue? Is it one for our web developer? Appreciate the help.
Moz Pro | | ayrutd1 -
MOZ Versus HUBSPOT??? If We Discontinue MOZ Subscription and Get HUBSPOT, Anything Lost?
How does Hubspot compare with MOZ? Doe it provide similar features or is the functionality very different? Is Hubspot complementary to MOZ or could it be used as a substitute? If we stopped our MOZ subscription and subscribed to Hubspot would we lose anything? Thanks, Alan
Moz Pro | | Kingalan10 -
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 -
White Label Version of Moz Pro?
I may have missed it, but is there a white label option for Moz Pro? I have a few clients that would like to login and have a look at competition, rankings, etc. Perhaps something like WebCEO or MySEOtool?
Moz Pro | | TysonDowns0 -
Moz WordPress Plugin?
WordPress is currently 18% of the Internet. Given its huge footprint, wouldn't it make sense for Moz to develop a WP plugin that can not only report site metrics, but help fix and optimize site structure directly from within the site? Just curious - I can't be the only one who wonders if I'm implementing Moz findings/recommendations correctly given the myriad of WP SEO plugins, authors, implementations.
Moz Pro | | twelvetwo.net5
