Tools for SEO: Google Keyword Planner vs. Google Trends

Keywords are the foundation of your SEO marketing and finding the best keywords is a must. Google Keyword Planner has been a tool used by SEO experts for quite some time, but is Google Trends here to steal the limelight?

What Is Keyword Planner?

Google Keyword Planner has long been a staple when it comes to planning effective marketing campaigns and even targeting articles on your website. The Keyword Planner is actually an improved and more focused version that combines the Google Keyword Tool and the AdWords Traffic Estimator tool.

By combining these two things, the Google Keyword Planner helps marketers not only search for relevant keywords, but also figure out which keywords have the highest search volumes — and this is where the first distinct difference can be found.

What Is Google Trends?

A similar online tool, Google Trends lets users see how often a specific keyword, subject, or phrase has been searched over a specific time period. Google Trends presents specific numbers relevant to how many Google searches were made in total over the same time period.

Comparing The Two

The major difference between Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends is how they calculate and display the popularity of a given search term.

Google Trends is only going to provide relative statistics that factor in how many total Google searches were made in a given time period. Google Keyword Planner, on the other hand, will show you estimated total search volume.

This difference may not sound important, but if you compare the results of these two tools side-by-side, you can actually see a huge difference in how the results for a particular keyword are displayed.

That’s because these tools function very differently and are actually intended for two different purposes. If you want to know how much traffic a keyword is getting, which is a huge ranking factor, you’re going to want to continue to use the Google Keyword Planner.

Google Trends has its purpose too, though. Say you were creating a website. If you were trying to decide whether or not a niche was popular, Google Trends can help you figure out whether interest is increasing, decreasing, or holding steady.

That’s because Google Trends doesn’t focus on how many hundreds, thousands, or millions of times a keyword is searched in a given date range. It bases its graphs on what percentage that keyword made up of all the searches made on Google during that time period. This does tie in to search volume, but it’s not a perfect correlation.

Therefore, there is no comparing the two when deciding which one you should use. In reality, both can be extremely valuable additions to your toolkit because they really have different purposes.

If you’re thinking about targeting a new subject, category, or niche, Google Trends can help you with the broad picture. But, when it comes time to find specific keywords, it’s best to stick to Keyword Planner so you can get actual search volume data.