Grouping Keyword Volumes
Google is now grouping keyword volumes for similar keywords in Keyword Planner. Google is associating keywords closely enough to group their volumes, we should expect that the search results would be very similar too.
What has Google changed and why does it matter?
In the last few weeks Google have also been reducing access to keyword planner data for some accounts. Earlier this month, it was announced that Keyword Planner data will be given only in very broad buckets for advertisers with "lower monthly spend" (although some ways around this have been found). The fact that Google is grouping keyword volumes in this way implies that they see these keywords as equivalent, at least to some extent.
What's going on in the SERPs?
This analysis is much more focused on the types of variations of keywords that we are seeing being grouped. These types of variations were categorised by, among others, Jennifer Slegg at The SEM Post.
The five types of variations that we've looked into for this analysis are the following:
- Initialisms/Abbreviations. For example, comparing SERPs for [BBC] and [British Broadcasting Corporation]
- Plurals. For example, [waffle maker] and [waffle makers].
- Verb stems with and without suffixes. For example, [calculate], [calculated] and [calculating].
- Keywords with and without punctuation. For example, [midnight's children] and [midnights children]
- Keywords with and without typos. For example, [heart rate monitor] and [heart rat monitor].
From that analysis, we were able to measure the prevalence of grouping keyword volumes within each category (i.e. the percentage of keyword pairs that have grouped volumes), and the similarity of the SERPs (the number of top ten results that were shared between the two keywords) for grouped and ungrouped keyword pairs.
Results
This showed an interesting pattern. There are only two categories with significant numbers of identical SERPs—Punctuation and Typos. In the case of keywords with and without punctuation, you are more likely to see identical SERPs (implying that Google sees the pair of keywords as identical) if keyword volumes are grouped than if they are not. This is not a hard-and-fast rule though – there are still some ungrouped keywords which have identical SERPs.
In the case of Typos, there are no grouped keyword pairs at all that have identical SERPs. Given also the low prevalence of grouped keywords in this category, it appears that the identical SERPs are coming from "showing results for" SERPs, where Google replaces results for the mistyped keywords with the correct one.
What conclusions can we draw?
1. The prevalence of keyword grouping is highest for plurals, and very low for typos. This may be a result of the sample of keywords used in this study, but overall, around 50% of keywords in the sample are grouped. This indicates that, although this volume grouping is a growing phenomenon in Keyword Planner data, it is not yet consistent across all SERPs.
2. There is not a lot of difference between keywords that are grouped by Keyword Planner, and those that aren't. The one group where there is a larger difference is the verb stems category. This is likely because there are many verbs where the present and past tense mean very different things, indicating different search intent. For example, the keywords [march] and [marched] have completely different intents due to the multiple meanings of the word 'march.' This means that there's no chance that these SERPs will be similar. On the other hand, some verbs have little intent difference between past and present forms (for example [admire] and [admired]). These types of keyword pairs generally have grouped volume, and also have more similar SERPs.
3. Overall, there is not a very high rate of similarity of SERPs for similar keywords The other reason is that I have a lot of faith in how smart Google is. Its developments in natural language processing and intent assessment give me the impression that it is able to associate similar keywords in the results it shows. It may be that things are heading in this direction, but it's too early for it to have been fully implemented. The alternative explanation would be Google is that smart, and can interpret the subtle difference between keywords with incredibly similar content.
The idea we get from this?
What does this mean for SEOs doing keyword research? Rank tracking companies such as STAT are looking into ways of splitting keyword volumes between the constituent keywords, so there is hope for at least semi-accurate volume data. What it does mean is that we should ignore the grouped volumes when targeting keywords—just because keywords are given the same volume, it doesn't mean you shouldn't target them individually on your site.
On a wider scale, this tells us something about how the anthropomorphised "Google" thinks and works. There are two very separate factors at work here—what Google tells us, and what we actually see. This is something Rand picked up on in his recent Whiteboard Friday, and it applies across all of search—Google tells us one thing, but search rankings don't necessarily behave the same way. This backs up my belief to never take anything at face value, and always do your own research.
Courtesy & Copyright
https://creativesaints.com/
http://graphicwebdesign.in/
https://www.papeel.com.br/
https://moz.com/blog/target-multiple-keywords-next-level
https://moz.com/blog/google-grouping-keyword-volumes-what-does-this-mean-for-seo
https://moz.com/blog?page=44
https://moz.com/blog?page=28
https://moz.com/blog?page=59