Comparing New vs. Old Keyword Difficulty Scores

We've had a few questions regarding the new Keyword Difficulty score used in Keyword Explorer, and how it compares to the old score in our stand-alone Keyword Difficulty tool. Specifically, people want to know why some scores are much lower using the new tool.

There a general discussion of the math behind the tool in this post:

Keyword Research in 2016: Going Beyond Guesswork

One of the problems we had with the original Keyword Difficulty score is that, because it's based on our Page Authority (PA) score and PA tends toward the middle of the 0-100 range, Difficulty got a bit bunched up. A Difficulty score in the low-to-mid 20s (via the old tool) is actually very low. So, we set out to re-scale the new tool to broaden that score and use more of the 0-100 range. We hoped this would allow more granularity and better comparisons.

While the logic is sound, we're concerned that we may have been too aggressive in this re-scaling, given recent feedback. So, we're going to be analyzing a large set of keywords (anonymously, of course) that people have run through the tool to see if too many Difficulty scores seem too low. If they do, we'll make some adjustments to the math.

In the meantime, please be aware that low scores may appear lower in the new tool and very high scores may appear higher. We wanted to address some of the limitations in V1 and feedback over the years, and so the old and new scores really can't be compared directly in a meaningful way. We're sorry for any confusion that has caused, and we will re-evaluate if necessary.

I have to agree with Russ. I think the old KW Difficulty model was making that keyword look stronger than it is, and the new one, while maybe a bit low, is more accurate. I'd also suggest, as Pete did, that using any keyword in isolation is unwise. Compare scores for similar terms you might target in the same sector, against the same sorts of competitors, and use that relative data -- KW Difficulty, and indeed PA, DA, and keyword volume, are all far more useful as comparative metrics than absolute ones.

I'm a little concerned here because taking a look at the search results page for the term Boho pretty easily reveals why it has a modest Keyword Difficulty score.

1. There is no exact match domain.
2. The top ranking pages have only a handful of backlinks.
3. Multiple pages in the top 10 don't even have the keyword in the URL.
4. Barely any of the links pointing to the top pages have exact-match anchor text

I don't mean to say that Boho is an "easy" keyword - I think that will be relative to the industry. But, if I were in the fashion retail space, this seems like a pretty smart keyword to go after.

I empathize with your frustration, and we certainly take it seriously. Let me first say that I've been involved in the Keyword Explorer project for a while, and I assure you that this was not about releasing a new product just to have something to do. Our goal was to really reinvent and help automate the keyword research process. We did re-work Keyword Difficulty as part of that, but there are many more features that we sincerely believe help simplify a difficult and time-consuming process. I'd encourage you to check out lists and Keyword Potential, as it helps balance Difficulty w/ Volume and other considerations.

The changes to Keyword Difficulty were carefully considered and tested. That's not to say they're perfect, and we are evaluating them based on large-scale customer data as we collect it. There were issues with V1, though, that we felt needed addressing. The original Keyword Difficulty score tended to bunch up on the middle values, didn't take into account the disproportionate impact of the top of the SERP, and handled missing data poorly. We may have overcompensated on the bunching up problem, based on what we're seeing over a lot of data, and are looking to address that ASAP.

I'm not clear on what tool you were comparing, but it's important to note that Keyword Difficulty isn't like volume, which has a real-world answer (Google won't tell us what it is, but there is one, in theory). So, every tool measures difficulty a bit differently. It doesn't really make sense to compare different tools - that difference won't be meaningful. Keyword Difficulty, in our design, isn't meant to be used in a vacuum - it's meant to be used to compare target keywords to each other. In other words, it's not so much that Keyword X scores a 30, but how it compares to Keyword Y. Our goal is to help you pick the best target from your list of potential targets, but any given score out of context isn't very useful. No single keyword tells the whole story.

Hi again

Before I start again, I used the Moz keyword difficulty tool two days ago to search for "boho" - difficulty score 25 - search volume 11000-30000. So, I told the team to write content using Boho as a major keyword. Today, I thought I would double check in on kwfinder.com and the difficulty is 56/100!!!! No comparison - but we have just wasted 2 days.

I know you are the SEO experts, but maybe you should take a few tips on retiring old systems and replacing them with new.

Do not introduce a new system if it is not working - test, test and test again. Run in parallel to ensure that the results are the same.
If your stakeholders don't want a new system, don't give them a new one and particularly don't give them a new one that is not better than the old one
Keep the old system available until you have sorted out any issues on the new system. Everyone hates change - except when it is for the better
If you have to retire the old system because Google is giving you a hard time about using their data and stats or wanting more money, we could understand that. But just changing it for unknown reasons or because your techies wanted a new project to work on is not good enough.
When Google got rid of their "keyword tool" and replaced it with "keyword planner tool" the whole SEO community was up in arms - Keyword planner tells you NOTHING compared with the old tool. What a waste of time that was, but Google had their reasons (perhaps inaccurate results for which they could be sued) - who knows.

Imagine a bank introducing a new banking system that hadn't been tested - they would lose money and customers hand over fist.

My suggestions is that unless you had a really good reason, bring it back until you have sorted this other clunky tool out.

Kind regards

Sharon

Hi dbomestar - thanks for the comment and the passion. Totally get where you're coming from. A few thoughts/responses:

Yes - we are going to add a new, more comprehensive SERPs analysis view (may be a few months away, but we'll get there). I agree that a quick view of lots of metrics that matter is useful and high value. I'll also ask our designer to find a way to make that view compact so it can all be seen at the same time. In the meantime, an export to CSV and viewing in Excel can replicate a lot of that.
US vs. International - I'm glad to say that, in the next few days, we'll have International volume data functioning, and we've already got International SERPs analysis and other metrics active in KW Explorer (using the dropdown next to the keyword entry). That should get to parity (actually, better than parity as the other data points will be better/more accurate) in KW Explorer vs. the old tool.
For rankings and SERPs Analysis, plus on-page comparisons/reports, I'd also suggest tracking keyword rankings inside Moz Analytics. There's a lot of features in that tool (also part of the Moz Pro subscription) that may serve the functionality you're seeking.

I know it's frustrating to lose the old tool, but I promise we'll keep investing in this new one and, within a few months, it will be vastly superior on all fronts to what KW Difficulty was. My apologies for the interim -- I totally get your desire to not have that waiting period between one going away and the other rising to the level you need. Unfortunately, it's the way software goes -- we need the engineering bandwidth available to focus on making the new thing better, and that means taking bandwidth away from maintaining the old tool.

Why would you kill Keyword Difficulty tool? I use it many times per day for years now and it's most used Moz tool that I am using. It was quick, nice and compact tool. I don't know how I'll live without it!

If you are going to kill it at least fix the new keyword explorer so we have usable alternative. I have 27 inch screen and I have to scroll down to see beyond 4th result. 10 results don't fit on the screen. Much harder to visually compare results when they are not on the same screen.

Please make SERP analysis page more compact so we can see 10 results on one screen. It's was incredibly useful and valuable thing on Keyword Difficulty tool that helped to get a very quick impression of the SERP results.

Keep in mind there is a lot of Moz users that are not from USA that work on this market. Since results are localized this helped us get better impression on the real results users get in USA. For people like me, having Keyword difficulty tool where I can in few seconds get idea which websites are ranking for the keyword on US market along with DA and LRD's data was priceless.

Hi there

I really appreciate your response. I am not after Ranking or authority, just something that gives me a ball park accurate figure on search volume and difficulty for ranking.

Google keyword planner gives me relatively accurate search volume and and kwfinder gives me search volume and difficulty score, but i prefer Moz for all other things.

So, hopefully you fine tune it and get the search volumes for different countries reinstated as well as difficulty.

If you would like to have our spreadsheets from when you had the previous keyword difficulty tool to compare it with the data that is now being delivered to me, I would be more than happy to share them with you, just let me know.

Kind regards

Sharon

Hi Sharon,

I can comment on Search Volume. You are right, at present the system only shows US volume data. But, any day now we should be rolling out locale-specific volumes!

Sorry about the frustration with the before/after. In the case of Keyword Difficulty, we may have adjusted it too aggressively and are testing a few changes that could soften that a little. I still believe the new score is an improvement in many ways, but we're looking to make an adjustment that will bring the new scores a little closer to the old ones.

For volume, it's a bit trickier, because we really feel that the new scores are better and based on richer data sources. We are working to adapt volume to other markets, as well. More on volume is in Russ's post:

Sweating the Details - Rethinking Google Keyword Tool Volume

In both cases, though, our keyword metrics aren't intended to be like ranking or authority. Ranking is something you measure over time, relative to itself - you care whether it went up or down. Our keyword metrics are intended to help you compare two keywords to each other. It's not so much about whether a keyword is more difficult today than last week (we expect that to be fairly stable over time, at least for most keywords), but whether Keyword X is a better bet for you to target than Keyword Y today.

Hey, thanks for the update.

My colleague used the old keyword difficulty tool a couple of months ago and has built up spreadsheets with all of our keywords, difficult, search volume for different countries etc for our two websites.

However, now I have taken over where she left off and the figures and stats you are giving me with this new tool, "keyword explorer" are vastly different to the previous "keyword difficulty" tool.

I mean vastly different search volumes and difficulty grading, to the point that I really don't know what set of data is correct.

Also, your search volumes do not change whether I put the keyword in for USA or for Australia - the volume stays the same?

Kind regards

Sharon

The old tool is still active temporarily, and I'm not sure if we've finalized the shut-off dates. We hear your concerns regarding the new limits. The new Keyword Explorer collects much more data and is quite a bit more resource intensive, but we're trying to balance out the needs of users of the old tools as best we can.

Thanks for the information on this!

It looks like this phased out the previous keyword difficulty tool right? If so, I am a bit disappointed that the daily limits seem so low (about the same for a whole month as the previous daily limit) - is this correct or am I missing something?

Thanks for the information Dr

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