Explorer Now Uses Global Search Volumes
By Dan Published Updated 2 min read
Quick answer
In October 2020 Explorer and Organic Keywords switched from US to global search volumes. Explorer has since moved to a new data provider and now uses United States data. Either way, traffic estimates are best used to compare sites, not as exact traffic numbers.
Key takeaways
- In 2020 Explorer switched from US to global search volumes.
- Explorer now uses a new data provider and shows United States search volumes.
- Traffic estimates come from ranking positions and search volumes, so treat them as estimates.
- Use traffic estimates to compare sites, not as exact traffic figures.
Update: this post is from October 2020. Explorer has since moved to a new data provider, and its organic keyword volumes and traffic estimates are now based on United States data.
Today we have launched a change to our Explorer tool and Organic Keywords database. You may now notice that the search volume figures and traffic estimates have increased for all sites. We are now using Global search volumes (instead of United States) for the database. This change should more closely match the “All Locations” default setting in KeySearch’s keyword research tool and make the volumes and traffic estimates more accurate. This is something that has been in the works for a long time and we are excited to finally make it live!
Why The Change?
When we first launched the Explorer tool a few years back we wanted to make the transition from other SEO tools as easy as possible for our users. This is why we used United States search volume for this database. It was what most users were already accustomed to and was just easier for comparison.
As time went on we were limited by this. Our keywords database is a global database and the United States search volume was just not accurate enough to predict traffic estimations for many websites. This change should give us better traffic estimations and more flexibility as to which keywords we can add to our ever-growing database.
Traffic Estimates
Although traffic estimates should now be more accurate we want to re-iterate, these are just estimates. You may find your site or other sites are higher or lower than the actual Google traffic coming in. Our estimates are based on ranking position using the search volumes we have available (mostly from Google) and the keywords in our database. These traffic estimates should be used more as a comparison from site to site and not as any definite idea of what the traffic might be.
Since Google doesn’t publicly release click-through rates for their search results, and their search volumes are not 100% accurate (although we try our best to make them more accurate, as you can read about in Ungrouping Close Variants), it makes traffic estimates very difficult. Not to mention that our database does not contain every single keyword imaginable.
A Better Future
Due to this change, we will be able to expand the size of our database more easily, and incorporate more keywords from non-English speaking languages as time goes on. This should only make things bigger and better when it comes to your keyword research and site analysis!
