Notes from the well
Eleven working notes on keyword research software: what each tool reports, where its numbers are drawn from in the vendor’s own words, what the entry plan unlocks, and what it costs. Every price carries the day it was read off the vendor’s page. No tool’s accuracy is measured here, because measuring it would mean seeing Google’s data, and nobody outside Google can.
Competitor keyword research tools: what they can and cannot show you
No free Google tool will show you someone else's keywords. What the paid tools reconstruct instead, how they do it, and which entry plans include competitor data.
Using Google Keyword Planner for SEO, and what its numbers really mean
Keyword Planner is free, its data comes from inside Google, and every figure it shows is rounded, averaged over twelve months and bundled with close variants. How to use it anyway.
Keyword clustering tools: turning a list into a page plan
Clustering decides how many pages your keyword list is really worth. What the dedicated tools do, what the general tools do instead, and what it costs.
Keyword difficulty scores, compared: what each vendor is actually measuring
Ahrefs counts links to the top ten and says the result is always an estimation. Semrush names six inputs and calls its score the most accurate on the market. Both quotes are real.
Keyword Insights: paying $58 a month to stop guessing at page structure
Keyword Insights clusters keywords into the pages you should write, bills in credits at 1 credit per clustered keyword, and has no free tier. What the Basic plan's 10,000 credits actually buy.
Keyword tool APIs and bulk lookups: reading the small print on limits
Six vendors meter keyword research in six incompatible units. What a lookup, a search, a credit and a report each mean, and which entry plans allow bulk work.
KWFinder vs Semrush Keyword Magic Tool: the entry ticket, compared
One costs $30.50 a month and gives 100 lookups a day. The other comes with a $139 platform and a free tier capped at 10 reports a day. Which one you need depends on one question.
Long-tail keyword tools, and why the cheap ones are good enough
Long-tail keywords are where small sites win, and they are the terms every tool's volume estimate is worst at. Which tools surface them, and why an expensive database does not help.
Mangools KWFinder: what $30.50 a month actually buys
KWFinder gives 100 keyword lookups a day on its cheapest plan, shows volume, difficulty and the live results on one screen, and allows no extra seats at all. Prices read 24 September 2026.
Ubersuggest at $12 a month, and why there is no link to it here
Ubersuggest is the cheapest paid keyword tool covered on this site, at $12 a month for 150 searches a day. Its affiliate terms are behind a password, so it is named, priced and never linked.
Why two keyword tools give the same keyword two different numbers
Nobody outside Google can see how often a term is searched, so every tool models it — from different sources, with different grouping and different rounding. What that means for the number on your screen.