Use Keyword Planner

Tip: If you’re affected by market changes, we recommend planning weekly rather than monthly or quarterly until markets stabilise.

Keyword Planner’s forecasts are refreshed daily and based on the last 7–10 days, adjusted for seasonality. Your forecasts will take into account any impact of market changes during this time frame. We’ve updated our seasonal model to account for current market conditions.

Keyword Planner helps you research keywords for your search campaigns.

You can use this free tool to discover new keywords related to your business and see estimates of the searches that they receive and the cost to target them.

Keyword Planner also provides another way to create search campaigns that’s centred around in-depth keyword research.

This article shows you how to use Keyword Planner to lay the groundwork for a successful campaign.

Benefits

  • Discover new keywords: Get suggestions for keywords related to your products, services or website.
  • See monthly searches: See estimates on the number of searches that a keyword gets each month.
  • Determine cost: See the average cost for your ad to show on searches for a keyword.
  • Organise keywords: See how your keywords fit into different categories related to your brand.
  • Create new campaigns: Use your keyword plan to create new campaigns centred on in-depth keyword research.

Bear in mind that while Keyword Planner can provide insights into keyword targeting, campaign performance depends on a variety of factors. For example, your bid, budget, product and customer behaviour in your industry can all influence the success of your campaigns.

Instructions

To access Keyword Planner:

  • Your account must be using Expert mode. You won’t be able to access Keyword Planner if your account is using Smart mode.
  • You must complete your account setup by entering your billing information and creating a campaign. If you’re not yet ready to spend money, you can choose to pause your campaigns.

1. Create a keyword plan

Once you open Keyword Planner, there are two ways to create your keyword plan:

  1. Search for new keywords by clicking Discover new keywords.
  2. Upload existing keywords by clicking Get search volume and forecasts.

Discover new keywords

A. Get ideas for new keywords

Enter words and/or websites related to your business to see keyword ideas. Learn more About Google Ads manager accounts

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon Tools icon.
  2. Click the Planning drop-down in the section menu.
  3. Click Keyword planner.
  4. Click Discover new keywords.
  5. There are two ways to discover new keyword ideas:
    • Start with keywords: Enter words related to your products or services. You can separate multiple phrases with a comma and space.
      • Enter your domain and Google will try to exclude keywords not related to what you offer.
    • Start with a website: Enter any website and Google will look for keywords related to the content on that site. Note: the contents of hyperlinks aren’t used to generate keyword ideas.
  6. Click Get results.
Tip: Specifying a keyword and a URL can result in a larger volume of keyword ideas, as compared to just URL.

After clicking 'Get results', you’ll see a list of keywords related to what you entered. These keywords haven’t been added to your plan. You can now edit your list with filters and categories to help you find those that make sense for your plan.

Note: Keywords with very low search volumes or keywords that are considered sensitive aren't discoverable or forecastable. In those instances, you’ll get an error message and prompt asking you to try new keywords or URLs.
This image is an example of a keyword targeting error message.

B. Edit your list of keyword ideas

You can now edit your list of keyword ideas using filters and categories. Learn more in-depth tips on editing your keyword list.

Filter

Narrow down your list of keywords based on criteria like competition, impression share and keyword text. For example, you may want to see keyword ideas where bids under £1 may be enough to reach the top of the page.

  1. Click Add filter.
  2. Select a filter and enter its values.
  3. Your list of ideas will now match the filter.

Refine by category

See groups of keywords based on their themes, brands or categories.

  1. Look for the 'Refine keywords' side panel on the 'Keyword ideas' page.
  2. Open the categories beneath it to see characteristics related to your keyword ideas.
  3. Untick the box next to each category to remove these keywords from your list.
    • For example, if your keywords are related to running shoes, you may see a category for shoe color. To only see keywords for 'red running shoes,' you’d uncheck the box for all other colours.

C. Add keywords to your plan and see a performance forecast

After you've made a list of keywords, there are two ways to incorporate them into your campaigns:
  • Add them to your 'Saved keywords' to organise them later and see forecasts of their performance.
  • Add them to ad groups within existing campaigns.

Follow these steps to add keywords to your plan and forecast their performance:

  1. Tick the box next to each keyword that you’d like to add to your plan. Adding keywords to 'Saved keywords' enables you to save them to your plan and organise them later.
  2. Specify the match type by clicking the Broad match drop-down and selecting a match type.
  3. Click Add keywords to create a new plan or click Add keywords to add the keywords to an existing plan.

Get search volume and forecasts

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon Tools icon.
  2. Click the Planning drop-down in the section menu.
  3. Click Keyword planner.
  4. Click Get search volume and forecasts.
  5. Enter or paste a list of keywords into the search box or upload a list of keywords from a CSV file following the instructions below:
    1. Click Upload a file.
    2. Click Select a file from your computer. Review the templates provided for uploading keywords.
      1. Upload a list of keywords: Your file should have just one column with the header titled 'Keyword'.
      2. Upload an entire keyword plan: Download the template to include optional data like campaign, location and ad group. along with your keyword.
    3. Click Submit.
  6. Click Get started.

2. Understand your keyword forecast

Your plan forecast shows you how many conversions, clicks or impressions you’re likely to get for your keywords based on your spend. Learn more about Keyword Planner forecasts

Understand your forecast

Your forecast is available on the 'Forecasts' page of your plan. It includes keywords that you uploaded through 'Get search volumes and forecasts' or those that you added from the 'Keyword ideas' page.

What’s included in your forecast

  • Forecast of optimal performance for all keywords based on your spend.
    • Change the metric that you’re forecasting by clicking 'Conversions' or 'Clicks'. This is available to you when you enable conversion tracking in your account. Otherwise, click 'Add conversion metrics' to review the options.
    • Change the average daily budget by clicking the amount.
    • Change your bid strategy by clicking the 'Maximise clicks' drop-down.
    • Click the drop-down arrow to see a chart of your estimated performance to get based on your spend.
  • Estimates for each individual keyword based on the 'Maximise clicks' bid strategy.
    • Edit the amount in the 'Average daily budget' to see how these estimates change.
  • Ad groups that your keywords will be added to in a new campaign if you implement your plan.
  • Date range for your forecast.
    • Click on the date range at the top of the page to change the timeframe for your forecast.

Additional options

  • Add new keywords by clicking the plus button and entering new keywords. You can also return to the 'Keyword ideas' page and add keywords from there.
  • Download forecast by clicking the download button.
  • Share plan with others by clicking the Share button and enabling share access.

3. Organise keywords into ad groups (English only)

Organise keywords

Enter words or websites related to your business to see keyword ideas.

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon Tools icon.
  2. Click the Planning drop-down in the section menu.
  3. Click Keyword planner.
  4. Click Organise keywords into ad groups.
  5. There are three ways to organise keywords:
    • Start with keywords: Enter words related to your products or services. You can separate multiple phrases with a comma and space.
      • Enter your domain and Google will try to exclude keywords not related to what you offer.
    • Start with a website: Enter any website and Google will look for keywords related to the content on that site.
    • Upload or paste: Upload a file or enter keywords. Keyword Planner will try to organise keywords into your campaigns, or you can manually organise them yourself.
  6. Click Auto-organise keywords.

After clicking 'Auto-organise keywords', you’ll see a list of ad groups with keyword suggestions. We’ll try to match them with the most relevant ad groups in your highest performing campaigns. Once complete, you’ll be able to review them for accuracy and make edits of your own. You can also download your work for review. No changes will be made to your account until you’re ready to upload them.

Note: Data discrepancies in your Keyword Planner within the same child accounts could happen because of how you logged into the account. For example, logging in directly into your child account or logging in to your manager account before redirecting to your child account could cause data discrepancies.

Send us feedback

We want to hear about what's working for you in Google Ads and what could be improved. To share your thoughts, click the help icon in the upper right-hand side of your account, then click Leave feedback.

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