Keyword Planner

What is Keyword Planner?

Keyword Planner is the official research tool of Google Ads. You'll find it in the "Tools" section of your Google Ads account. It serves two purposes: discovering new keywords (based on terms or your website) and retrieving search volume and forecasts for existing keyword lists. The tool itself costs nothing, all you need is a Google Ads account.

How to Use Keyword Planner: Step by Step

1. Create an account or sign in: No Google Ads account, no Keyword Planner. If you don't want to run a campaign yet, switch to Expert Mode during setup and skip campaign creation.
2. Open the tool: Click "Tools" in your account, then select Keyword Planner under "Planning".
3. Choose the mode: "Discover new keywords" returns ideas based on terms or a website. "Get search volume and forecasts" evaluates a list you already have.
4. Set language and location: Adjust both before your first analysis, otherwise you are reading numbers for the wrong market. For local businesses, city level beats country level.
5. Filter the ideas: Exclude competitor brand terms, set the date range to the last twelve months and check the seasonal curve before trusting an average.
6. Take the list further: Add relevant keywords to your plan or download them as CSV. Then assign match types and define matching negative keywords.

Keyword Ideas or Forecasts: The Difference

The two modes answer different questions. Keyword ideas show you what people actually search for, including variants you would never think of. Forecasts project clicks, impressions and costs for a finished list at an assumed bid and budget. A forecast is a model, not a promise: it knows neither your ad copy nor your landing page nor your Quality Score.

What Data Does Keyword Planner Provide?

• Average monthly searches: How often a term is searched, including seasonal trends
• Competition: How heavily other advertisers bid on the keyword (low, medium, high)
• Bid estimates: Top-of-page bid ranges as a rough CPC orientation
• Keyword ideas: Related terms you wouldn't have thought of yourself

Limitations of the Tool

Without active campaigns and meaningful spend, Google only shows search volume in broad ranges, more a band of thousands than a specific number. In practice, the figures only get more precise once campaigns run continuously in the account. The planner also groups similar terms into one search volume. The actual granularity of search queries is finer than the data suggests.

Pro Tip: Treat bid estimates as orientation, not truth. Real click prices depend on Quality Score, location, and competition at auction time. For budget planning, work with a range instead: the Google Ads budget calculator combines click price, conversion rate and targets into an order of magnitude you can hold against the Keyword Planner forecast.

Further resources

• Keyword research for Google Ads
• Google Ads basics: beginner guide
• Understanding keyword match types
• Using negative keywords properly
• Google Ads budget calculator