What Is Keyword Search Volume? + 5 Free Tools to Check It

Uncovering keyword search volume helps you find keywords with potential to drive search visibility and even traffic to your site. 

Today, we’ll show you how to use free tools to find keyword search volumes for terms people search on Google and YouTube. You’ll also learn how to find the best keywords for your site.

What Is Keyword Search Volume?

Keyword search volume is a metric that estimates how many times people search a specific keyword in search engines (like Google or YouTube).

For example, the monthly volume for the keyword “what is keyword search volume” is 40 searches per month in the U.K. and 410 searches per month globally. 

You can find a keyword’s search volume using specific tools (we’ll highlight some tools shortly).

And as more people search using AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini, some tools have AI volume estimates for search topics.

AI volume is separate from traditional search volume. And this article focuses on keyword search volume in search engines like Google and YouTube. 

Why Is Checking Search Volume Important?

Checking search volume is important because it helps you identify how many people you can potentially reach via your paid ads and organic content if you show for the corresponding keywords.

But search volume alone doesn’t tell you the full picture of whether a term is worth targeting. That’s why most tools show volume alongside metrics like keyword difficulty (how hard it is to rank for each keyword) and search intent (the reason people are searching for a certain keyword).

5 Free Tools to Check Google Keyword Search Volumes

You can check a keyword’s search volume for Google with any of the free tools below.

Semrush Keyword Overview

Semrush’s Keyword Overview tool shows the entered keyword’s search volume alongside keyword difficulty, search intent, cost per click (CPC), and more.

To use the free Keyword Overview, enter the term you want to research, choose your country, and click “Check Keyword.” You can run up to five requests per day.

You’ll see the average number of monthly searches for your keyword along with other data needed to guide your content strategy. 

A helpful feature of Keyword Overview is the “SERP Analysis” section that shows the top ranking pages and each page’s Authority Score—a metric that calculates a page’s quality and SEO strength.  

Knowing a site’s Authority Score helps you understand how likely your site is to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Upgrading to a paid Semrush SEO Toolkit plan gives you higher search limits. Plus additional information like personalized metrics and potential traffic estimates to help you prioritize keywords.

SE Ranking

SE Ranking’s free keyword tool provides search volume, keyword difficulty, and CPC data for up to five keywords per day.

I like how SE Ranking also highlights “Related Keywords” and “Questions” to help you identify other relevant keywords to include in your content.

Searchvolume.io

Searchvolume.io lets you  enter up to 800 keywords at once to get monthly search volumes for all of them. 

Searchvolume.io doesn’t give additional information like CPC or difficulty metrics, but being able to upload 800 keywords at a time makes it useful for quickly validating large keyword lists.

SpyFu

SpyFu’s keyword tool shows you monthly search volumes and metrics for paid ads—like the related keywords advertisers use in their campaign. 

A free SpyFu account gets you unlimited daily keyword searches with limited data.

I like how SpyFu’s keyword tool gives users an “Estimated Clicks” metric. Knowing a keyword’s traffic potential can help prioritize content creation around keywords that are more likely to drive traffic.

Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is Google’s official keyword research tool that you can use with a free Google Ads account (you don’t need to be running campaigns to use the tool).

You can upload up to 10,000 keywords in Google’s “Get search volumes and forecasts” feature to check metrics like average monthly searches, changes in search volume, and competition levels for paid ads. 

Users who aren’t running campaigns will see volume ranges like “1K-10K,” and those who are running campaigns with sufficient ad spend will see more accurate search volumes, making Keyword Planner more useful to users running Google Ads. 

One unique aspect of the Keyword Planner is the “Three month change” column. This column shows which keywords are growing or declining to help you find rising keywords to capitalize on and declining ones that you might want to avoid.

How to Check YouTube Keyword Search Volumes

You can check YouTube keyword search volumes using specific tools that focus on terms users enter into YouTube.

YouTube search volumes can differ from Google search volumes—a keyword with 375,100 Google searches might only have 6,700 YouTube searches. This means without YouTube-specific data, you could target keywords for your videos with different search volume than expected. 

Here are some of the best YouTube keyword tools for finding search volume:

• Keyword Analytics for YouTube ($10/month): This YouTube-specific tool shows search volumes, competitive rates, and related keywords. It also shows links to popular videos on your topic.
• TubeBuddy (starts at $15/month): TubeBuddy’s Keyword Explorer provides data like search volumes, trends, average video views for first-page videos, and keyword scores based on your channel to help you determine how hard it will be to show for certain terms
• vidIQ ($19/month): vidIQ displays metrics like YouTube search volumes, related keywords, trends, and commonly searched questions

How to Choose Keywords

You can choose keywords to target by balancing volume against factors like competition, intent, and your site’s current authority to identify realistic opportunities.

• Balance volume with competition. A keyword with high search volume and difficulty requires significant link-building and content investment to rank. A keyword with lower search volume and difficulty will be easier to rank for with solid content. 
• Consider low-volume keywords. Targeting many low-volume keywords often delivers more traffic than competing for a single high-volume keyword where you rank on page 2. 
• Consider the search intent (the searcher’s goal).Aligning your content with a keyword’s search intent improves your chances of ranking and driving traffic to your site. If you’re running ads, you’ll usually want to target keywords with a transactional intent
• Prioritize rising keywords over declining ones. Check trend data in your keyword tool or in Google Trends. A keyword that’s steadily getting more monthly searches signals growing interest—create content now before competition increases. A keyword on a downward trend might not justify new content unless you can capture the remaining demand easily.
• Identify any important changes to a keyword’s volume. Some searches align with seasonal events like holiday-specific keywords (plan to have seasonal content ready before demand spikes). Other keywords might have lost volume over time due to AI, so appearing for them might be better for driving brand awareness than traffic. 

Monitor Your Keyword Rankings

Monitoring your keyword rankings for the terms you choose to target shows whether your SEO and PPC strategies are working

Use Semrush’s Position Tracking tool to review your paid and unpaid Google positions for your target keywords. You can even track how visible you are in ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode.

Then, tweak and adjust your strategy based on your performance.