Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why is MOZ and Google search Volume so different?
-
A search term in MOZ shows the monthly search volume to be 49K. In Google, the same term shows the search volume at only 1300 monthly searches. Which do I trust?
Thanks,
Don
-
You've answered a question I've been searching for today so thanks Bryan.
Whilst I fully understand why Google does not allow Moz to access those figures, I cannot see the value in understanding solely Bing stats - I'll end up optimising our website for Bing and it's Google we need stats for. Is the Google Keyword Planner the same as Moz's keyword difficulty tool? What's the difference and benefits?
Thanks
Jason

-
Thanks Donna and Bryan.
I will check out Rand's article.
-
Totally agree Bryan.
-
Oh no question about that Donna!

To my knowledge there aren't any tools that can/will give exact figures. But in comparison to the Moz Keyword Analysis tool (which provides BING search results), using Google Keyword Planner is about as close as you can get to an "approximate" number.
All these tools do is provide us with an idea of what to focus on. Like Rand mentioned in his post (which is great)...
"THE IMPORTANT LESSON: Running discovery-focused searches in AdWords may not show you all the valuable/high-volume keyword phrases connected to a word/phrase."
And then he goes on to recommend ways to address the challenge. FUN FUN FUN!

-
And even then, you have to be careful because Google lies by omission. Rand explains in this Moz Blog post dated February 14, 2012.
-
Absolutely!! Glad I could shed some insight on this for you.
But to answer your question, I would only use/trust Google's Keyword Planner especially since you can narrow it down to specific areas and get actual SPM data.
Have a great weekend and good luck with your project!
-
Yep! kind of crazy.
Well, thanks again. I guess we live with it.
I really appreciate your timely response.
-
Unfortunately yeah that's the deal man.
When I first saw what you are seeing I called into Moz and was like HEY!! What is this nonsense? That's when they dropped it on me that Google doesn't provide them that information.
So the only data you get that is actually from Google (even when you select the "Google" drop down option) is the Keyword Difficulty.
-
Hi Bryan,
So even though I selected Google using the drop down button, it really doesn't matter, I'll still get Bing results? I see the note at the top that you are referring to. If it doesn't use Google results I would think they would remove the selection for Google from the drop down selection.
Thanks for the input.
Thanks,
Don
-
Hey Don!
The reason is because Moz keyword tool pulls the SPM (searches per month) data from Bing unfortunately. Google doesn't allow Moz to access this info from their API.
If you notice up at the top of the column it actually states "BING Search Volume". I've added a screenshot to reference. Hope this helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How long does it takes for Moz pro to find backlinks and increase my score?
Hi, I'm running a website for tourism & travel called Visit Guide or دليل السفر and i have many backlinks from many websites ( DoFollow & NoFollow ) They are older than 10 days and Moz has not discovered them yet nor found them? How to push Moz Pro to find my backlinks? or how to SpeedIndex my backlinks in other words?
Moz Pro | | VisitDotGuide0 -
Google Site search operator showing different results than Search Console
Hey everybody, I am seeing some confusing results. I am seeing that in the back of our Search Console we are showing around 4,500 sites indexed. If I use the "site" operator in google, only 2820 show up... any thoughts as to why that happens?
Moz Pro | | HashtagHustler1 -
Robots.txt blocking Moz
Moz are reporting the robots.txt file is blocking them from crawling one of our websites. But as far as we can see this file is exactly the same as the robots.txt files on other websites that Moz is crawling without problems. We have never come up against this before, even with this site. Our stats show Rogerbot attempting to crawl our site, but it receives a 404 error. Can anyone enlighten us to the problem please? http://www.wychwoodflooring.com -Christina
Moz Pro | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Block Moz (or any other robot) from crawling pages with specific URLs
Hello! Moz reports that my site has around 380 duplicate page content. Most of them come from dynamic generated URLs that have some specific parameters. I have sorted this out for Google in webmaster tools (the new Google Search Console) by blocking the pages with these parameters. However, Moz is still reporting the same amount of duplicate content pages and, to stop it, I know I must use robots.txt. The trick is that, I don't want to block every page, but just the pages with specific parameters. I want to do this because among these 380 pages there are some other pages with no parameters (or different parameters) that I need to take care of. Basically, I need to clean this list to be able to use the feature properly in the future. I have read through Moz forums and found a few topics related to this, but there is no clear answer on how to block only pages with specific URLs. Therefore, I have done my research and come up with these lines for robots.txt: User-agent: dotbot
Moz Pro | | Blacktie
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 User-agent: rogerbot
Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0 My questions: 1. Are the above lines correct and would block Moz (dotbot and rogerbot) from crawling only pages that have numberOfStars=0 parameter in their URLs, leaving other pages intact? 2. Do I need to have an empty line between the two groups? (I mean between "Disallow: /*numberOfStars=0" and "User-agent: rogerbot")? (or does it even matter?) I think this would help many people as there is no clear answer on how to block crawling only pages with specific URLs. Moreover, this should be valid for any robot out there. Thank you for your help!0 -
Meta Tag Descriptions not being found in Moz Crawls
Hey guys, I have been managing a few websites and have input them into Moz for crawl reports, etc. For a while I have noticed that we were getting a gratuitous amount of errors when it came to the number of missing meta tags. It was numbering in the 200's. The sites were in place before I got here and a lot of the older posts no one had even attempted to include tags, links of the page or anything. As they are all Wordpress Sites and they all already had the Yoast/Wordpress SEO plug-in installed on them, I decided I would go through each post and media file one at a time and update their meta tags via the plug in. I personally did this so I know that I added and saved each one, however the Moz crawl reports continue to show that we are missing roughly 200 meta tags. I've seen a huge drop off in 404 errors and stuff since I went through and double checked everything on the sites, however the meta tag errors persist. Is this the case that Moz is not recognizing the tags when it crawls because I used the Yoast Plugin? Or would you say that the plugin is the issue and I should find another way to add meta tags to the pages and posts on the site? My main concern is that if Moz is having issues crawling the sites, is Google also seeing the same thing? The URLS include:
Moz Pro | | MOZ.info
sundancevacationsblog.com
sundancevacationsnews.com
sundancevacationscharities.com Any help would be appreciated!0 -
Problem to log into moz
Every time the moz logs me out from the account and then I can not log in. It shows on the left side my name like I am logged in and then when I want go to community suddenly I am not logged in. It offen shows 502 error. It was first doing on firefox, then I manage to log in chrome and now I had to log in private browsing.
Moz Pro | | Rebeca12 -
Discrepancies in PA and LRDs reported in different SEOmoz tools
I've noticed a difference in the reported PA and LRD numbers for URLs depending on whether you use Open Site Explorer, or look at the same metrics from within the rankings history (in your campaign set up). I've checked this for a few URLs and what I'm seeing is the reported scores for PA and LRDs is different 9 times out of ten. The PA is sometiomes higher on one report, lower on another, or vice versa. Same for LRDs. I thought it might be because one report was lagging behind and using old data, but that would only make sense if I was seeing an increase in reported LRDs, but it just as often shows a decrease ! Is this just a bug in the campaign>rankings history report or is there a reason for the discrepancies?
Moz Pro | | Websensejim0