Google Keyword Planner (in the Google Ads interface, simply Keyword Planner) is Google Ads' free tool that suggests keywords and estimates their monthly searches, the competition between advertisers and the cost of clicks. It was built for people buying ads, but it's also where almost every keyword research project in the UK starts: "google keyword planner" gets an average of 8,100 searches a month on Google UK, according to the tool itself.
Using it is easy. Reading it properly isn't: the column everyone looks at, average monthly searches, is a rounded twelve-month average, and on a seasonal product it can get the month you care about wrong by a factor of six. Below you'll find the step-by-step process, what each column means according to Google's documentation, and a test we ran on 10 October 2026 on seven UK keywords to show where the average misleads.
How to access Google Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner sits inside Google Ads, so you need a Google Ads account. You don't need to launch a campaign, but you do need to finish setting up the account: Google's official guide says "You must enter your billing information and complete your account setup to access basic features like keyword suggestions" (Google Ads Help).
- Sign in to Google Ads with a Google account and complete the set-up, billing details included.
- If the wizard pushes you to create a campaign straight away, look for the option to switch to Expert Mode: from there you can finish the set-up without publishing any ads.
- Open the Tools menu and choose Keyword Planner.
One practical consequence that guides rarely mention: an account with no spend sees volumes in ranges. Since August 2016 Google has shown advertisers with low monthly spend bands such as 100-1K or 1K-10K instead of the figure, as Search Engine Land reported when Google confirmed the change. There are seven bands: 0, 1-100, 100-1K, 1K-10K, 10K-100K, 100K-1M and over 1M. The same restriction can kick in if you send too many requests through the API.
The two functions: new ideas or volumes for a list
When you open it, the tool offers two routes, and picking the right one saves you half an hour.
Discover new keywords
Use it when you don't have a list yet. You can start in two ways. With "Start with keywords" you enter terms linked to what you sell; with "Start with a website" you enter an address and, in Google's words, "Google will look for keywords related to the content on that site". It also works with a competitor's site or with the URL of a single page: the more specific the URL, the more tightly the ideas stick to that page's topic.
After the first search it pays to use the filters (keyword text, competition, bid, excluding keywords already in the account) and the option that groups ideas by theme, brand or category. It's the quickest way to get from a few thousand rows to a list you can actually read.
Get search volume and forecasts
Use it when you already have the list, for example from the queries in Google Search Console or from a brainstorm with your sales team. You can paste the keywords or upload a CSV file with a single column headed "Keyword". The official limits are 80 characters and 10 words per keyword. This gives you the historical metrics for each term and, in the Forecast tab, an estimate of clicks, impressions and cost for the budget you set.
How to read the columns without getting them wrong
Almost every mistake starts here, because the columns have names that seem to say one thing and measure another. This is what Google says they mean in its documentation on the metrics.
| Column | What it really measures | The typical mistake |
|---|---|---|
| Avg. monthly searches | The average number of searches over the last 12 months, rounded. Google states that "Your search volume statistics are rounded". | Taking it as the volume for any given month. |
| Three month change and YoY change | The recent change and the change on the year before. | Ignoring them: they're the first sign of a topic that's growing or shrinking. |
| Competition | How many advertisers compete for the keyword in ads. | Reading it as organic ranking difficulty. |
| Top of page bid (low range) | Roughly the 20th percentile of what advertisers paid to appear at the top, over the last 30 days. | Using it as the expected average CPC. |
| Top of page bid (high range) | Roughly the 80th percentile, again over the last 30 days. | Treating it as a ceiling. |
The Competition column deserves one more line. "High" means a lot of advertisers buy ads on that word, not that it's hard to rank first organically: for that you need a different metric, keyword difficulty, which is built by looking at the links and authority of the pages already on page one.
The test: how much the 12-month average misleads
We queried the Google Ads API, which returns the same data as Keyword Planner, through DataForSEO for seven UK keywords with different patterns: four seasonal ones, for summer or winter, one tied to a tax deadline, one B2B and one that should hardly move at all. Location United Kingdom, language English, period September 2025 to August 2026.
| Keyword | Avg. monthly searches | Lowest month | Highest month | Peak divided by low | Months above the average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| air conditioner | 135,000 | 6,600 (October and December 2025) | 823,000 (June 2026) | 124.7 | 3 of 12 |
| paddling pool | 90,500 | 3,600 (November and December 2025) | 368,000 (May 2026) | 102.2 | 3 of 12 |
| christmas pudding | 27,100 | 2,900 (May and June 2026) | 165,000 (December 2025) | 56.9 | 2 of 12 |
| self assessment tax return | 74,000 | 33,100 (August 2026) | 246,000 (January 2026) | 7.4 | 2 of 12 |
| erp software | 1,600 | 1,000 (December 2025) | 4,400 (September 2025) | 4.4 | 4 of 12 |
| wood pellets | 5,400 | 3,600 (July 2026) | 8,100 (November 2025) | 2.2 | 1 of 12 |
| home insurance | 74,000 | 60,500 (three months) | 90,500 (September 2025 and August 2026) | 1.5 | 2 of 12 |
The clearest case is christmas pudding. Keyword Planner says 27,100 searches a month, but in December 2025 there were 165,000, six times the average, and in nine months out of twelve the real volume stayed below that number. If you only look at the average you underestimate December and overestimate the rest of the year.
For "paddling pool" the ratio between the peak month and the lowest is 102 to 1, and for "air conditioner" 125 to 1. With an average of 90,500 an online shop might expect steady demand; the monthly figures say that in November one person searches for the product for every hundred in May. The same applies, to a lesser extent, to "self assessment tax return", which peaks in January, the month of the 31 January online filing deadline (GOV.UK), with a second, smaller rise in April when the new tax year starts.
At the other end, "home insurance" moves only one and a half times between the worst and best month: here the average describes reality well enough. "wood pellets", which we expected to be a winter keyword, varies only 2.2 times in the UK. B2B moves too: "erp software" drops to 1,000 searches in December 2025 against 4,400 in September 2025, which matters in practice if you're deciding when to raise a campaign's budget.
The fix is simple: in the ideas table, expand the row or download the file, and look at the twelve monthly columns. If the ratio between peak and low is above 3, don't use the average on its own. For trends longer than a year you need Google Trends, which has data back to 2004 but gives indices, not volumes.
Three things Keyword Planner rounds or merges
Volumes sit on a stepped scale
In the data we pulled, every value falls on a fixed scale: 2,900, 3,600, 4,400, 5,400, 6,600, 8,100, 9,900, 12,100, 14,800, 18,100, 22,200, 27,100, 33,100, 40,500, 49,500, 60,500, 74,000, 90,500. Each step is about 22% higher than the one before. That means two keywords with 74,000 searches can have real volumes a few thousand apart, and that a change from one month to the next smaller than one step simply doesn't show. Google admits it in a single line: "Your search volume statistics are rounded".
Variants get added together
Plurals, abbreviations and different spellings of the same word often get the same volume, the volume of the group. In our test of Keyword Planner alternatives "seo consultant" and "seo consultants" both came out at 2,900 searches on Google UK, and when we checked them again on 10 October 2026 they also shared the same average CPC, £14.37 (converted from US dollars at the Bank of England rate for 8 October 2026, $1.3226 = £1): if you add them up in a spreadsheet you end up with 5,800 searches that don't exist. Before doing the sums, group the variants into a single topic, as we explain in our guide to keyword clustering.
Volumes tend to be higher than reality
The largest study on the subject was published by Ahrefs in November 2021, by Tim Soulo: 72,635 keywords in the 1,000-10,000 band, with the Keyword Planner volume compared with real impressions in Search Console. The result: 91.45% of volumes were overestimated and only 45.22% could be called more or less accurate, meaning within 50%. The sample isn't a UK one and the figure is a few years old, but it's the most solid measurement available and we haven't found a UK equivalent.
How to use Keyword Planner for SEO, in six steps
- Start from the data you already have. Export from Search Console the queries your site appears for and upload them to "Get search volume and forecasts": you get the market volume of the searches you're already visible on.
- Widen it with a website. In "Start with a website" enter the URL of a competitor's page that ranks better than yours. The ideas that come out are the topics they cover and you don't.
- Filter before you read. Exclude competitor brands and off-topic keywords, then sort by volume. With thousands of rows and no filters you end up choosing at random.
- Look at the twelve months, not the average. Use the rule from the test: if the ratio between peak and low is above 3, plan the content two or three months before the peak.
- Check the SERP. Search for your shortlisted keywords on Google and look at what ranks. Keyword Planner tells you nothing about search intent: if page one is all product pages, an article won't get in.
- Export and group. Download as CSV, merge the variants the tool has already added together and give each group a single page.
One limit to know before you start: on long searches Keyword Planner often returns nothing. Google says so explicitly: "Keywords with very low search volumes, or keywords that are considered sensitive aren't discoverable or forecastable." In the same test of alternatives we tried eight B2B queries of four or five words on Google UK: four came back with no data. For the long tail the best source is still Search Console, because it reports real searches, not an estimate.
How to use it for Google Ads: bids and forecasts
If you're planning a campaign, the most useful columns are the two top-of-page bids. In the same extraction of 10 October 2026 the range varies a lot from sector to sector.
| Keyword | Low-range bid | High-range bid | Competition |
|---|---|---|---|
| paddling pool | £0.08 | £0.27 | High |
| air conditioner | £0.15 | £1.15 | High |
| self assessment tax return | £1.33 | £8.57 | Low |
| payroll services | £11.01 | £66.34 | Medium |
| erp software | £5.09 | £45.37 | Medium |
| home insurance | £5.90 | £12.79 | High |
The table also shows why the Competition column doesn't help with SEO: "paddling pool" has high competition and a top-of-page click that costs pennies, while "self assessment tax return" has low competition and a high-range bid of up to £8.57. They're two different measures. To understand how the real price of a click is set, see our guide to cost per click.
Take the forecasts for what they are. Google refreshes them daily using data from the last 7-10 days, adjusted for seasonality, and from 1 June 2023 it removed ad group and keyword-level forecasts from the API (Google Ads Developers blog). Today the estimate works on the plan as a whole: useful for checking whether a budget is realistic, not very reliable for deciding which keyword to spend on. If you're starting with a small budget, how to set up your first campaign is covered in our guide to Google Ads for small businesses.
Where Keyword Planner falls short
Volume tells you how many people search for something, not how many will click. On 10 October 2026, on Google UK, "how to use google keyword planner" showed an AI Overview above the first organic result, and "google keyword planner" showed one straight after Google's own page in first place: some searchers get the answer without opening any page. On informational queries you have to allow for that, and we cover it in our article on zero-click searches.
The other limit is that the tool only sees Google. For anyone working mostly in B2B, the queries that bring in contracts are often so specific they don't show up at all. In those cases the best data comes from the search terms report of a campaign that's already running and from Search Console impressions: that's why, when we work with a client, we have SEO and Google Ads work on the same keyword list. If you want to set up your work that way, you'll find how we do it on our SEO and Google Ads service pages.
Frequently asked questions about Google Keyword Planner
Yes. The tool costs nothing, but to use it you need a Google Ads account with billing details completed. You don't have to publish a campaign; without any spend, though, volumes appear in ranges, for example 1K-10K.
With an active campaign and enough spend. Google doesn't give a threshold: since 2016 it has only said that accounts with low monthly spend may see limited data. Even with full data the volumes stay rounded on a stepped scale.
No. It measures how many advertisers compete in paid ads. A keyword with high competition can be easy to rank for organically and vice versa: for SEO you need keyword difficulty.
The first generates ideas from words or from a website. The second measures a list you already have, pasted in or uploaded as a CSV with a single column headed Keyword, and calculates click and cost forecasts.
Because keywords with very low search volumes, or keywords considered sensitive, aren't discoverable or forecastable, as Google puts it. For those searches the best source is Search Console.
Yes. In the search settings you change the location from United Kingdom to a nation, region, county or city, and the volumes are recalculated. It's the quickest way to check whether a local search has demand before you build a dedicated page.
The number to look at isn't the volume
Keyword Planner is usually used to choose what to write about. The test points to a more useful job: deciding when. The monthly series for "paddling pool" shows demand nearly tripling from March (14,800) to April (40,500) and then rising ninefold to May (368,000), so a page published in May arrives when the peak is already under way, because Google needs weeks to rank it. The same calendar applies to christmas pudding in October and to the self assessment tax return in October or November, ahead of the January deadline. Few people use it this way, and it's the part of the tool that's easiest to read.
