We Analyzed Over 2,987,997 Million US KEYWORDS: Here Are 7 Shocking Key Takeaways.

We studied over 2.9 million US keywords to get an understanding of the search queries that people use in Google.

Our research was focused on search queries, keyword length, and keyword difficulty.

Using data from DataForSEO, Ahrefs, and PageTraffic we discovered some very interesting facts.

And now it’s time to share with you.

Here is a summary of our key findings:

1. Long-Tail Keywords make up 91.8% of all search queries.

2. 14.1% of Searches are in question form.

3. The length of an average keyword is 1.9 words.

4. Americans Searches In  Google More  Than Other English-Speaking Countries.

5. Longer keywords get searched less than shorter keywords.

6. Popular Keywords Have higher Ranking Scores.

7. “How”, “What”, “Where” and “Who” are the most searched questions.

Here is a detailed analysis of these findings:

1. Long-Tail Keywords make up 91.8% of all search queries.

Our research shows that even though long-tail keywords make up a significant portion of all search queries, they don't contribute significantly to search volume.

Long-tail keywords are search terms with a low monthly search volume. They frequently have a higher conversion rate because they are typically longer and more detailed than their "head" counterparts.

For instance, the keyword "meditation" receives 211k searches per month, making it a "head" keyword. 

The keyword “can meditation make you smarter” is a long-tail keyword because it only gets 50 searches per month.

2. 14.1% of Searches are in question form.

This did not come as a surprise because Search engines are fundamentally question-and-answer devices. They are used by people to look up everything from the weather forecast to thoughtful, in-depth answers to particular questions.

3. The length of an average keyword is 1.9 words.

According to our analysis, the average keyword among the 306 Million keywords we examined was 1.9 words and 8.5 characters long.

Characters can be anything from letters to numbers to punctuation marks like "." and "-" to whitespace. Control characters, which do not correspond to visible symbols but rather to instructions to format or process the text, are also included in the concept. 

The interesting part was the relationship between keyword length and search volume.

We discovered that the most frequently searched keywords have between 5 and 10 characters. However, Extremely short or long keywords received few searches.

In other words, short keywords(1-3 words) receive more search volume than long keywords(5+ words).

4. Americans Searches In  Google More  Than Other English-Speaking Countries.

Americans use Google more than the UK and even Australia.

We also noted that keywords with high search volumes in America tend to be popular internationally.

5. Longer keywords get searched less than shorter keywords.

During our study we discovered that:

Short-tail keywords receive more searches on average.

On the other hand,long-tail keywords are  "less popular" search terms. However, they are more focused than short-tail keywords, giving search engines more information and clearly indicating search intent.

6. Popular Keywords Have higher Ranking Scores.

To arrive at data around Keyword Difficulty we analyzed a subset of words(2.5m) from Ahrefs.

We discovered that there is a lot of SEO competition around the most searched keywords.

This in turn makes their ranking scores/keyword difficulty hit the roof.

Keyword Difficulty (KD) is an SEO Metric that calculates how challenging it would be to rank on Google's first page for a specific keyword. It is ranked from 0 to 100, with 100 being the most difficult to rank for. 

7. “What”, “How”, “Where” and “Who” are the most searched questions.

Surprisingly, the most asked question on google is “ What to Watch?”

This question is closely followed by “What is my IP address?”

Questions are frequently long tail terms due to their nature as relatively long and specific search terms. In terms of keyword frequency, long tails are also common, as we had previously mentioned. However, their search volume is typically low (even when combined).

Conclusion.

I would like to thank Backlinko, DataForSEO, Ahrefs and PageTraffic for aiding this study by providing the data we used to analyze 306Million US Keywords.

Those who are interested here is a PDF of our research procedures and methods. And a link to a GitHub repository that contains all the raw data.

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