Search Keyword Research: Topics, Map, Competitors

The estimate comes first

Both runs open a panel before they start. It says Nothing is spent until you press Start. Getting the estimate is free. The panel lists Checks planned, Free from recent checks, Would use from your allowance and Left this month, each with a plain definition. A map shows at most, because a map can finish with fewer keywords than it was priced for.

If the run fits, the summary reads This run would use X of the Y checks left this month, with your own numbers in place of X and Y. Press Start run. If it does not fit, Start is off and a button offers the largest run that does fit. If nothing new can be checked, the panel says so until the allowance resets at the start of next month.

Once started, a progress line shows how many checks are done, in the form X of Y checks, with a bar. The page refreshes every 10 seconds while the run is going. A Search history list at the bottom shows past runs, their status and the checks each used. Checks used reads 0 until a run has finished.

Topics

Run keyword lab starts from your active tracked keywords and your top Search Console queries. It expands them into related searches and People Also Ask questions, dropping brand terms. The expansion only uses results pages already checked in the last 7 days, which is why the estimate costs nothing. A run covers 300 keywords by default.

Each checked keyword has its top ten results stored. Keywords that share at least three of those results are one topic, named by a head keyword. Each topic gets an action. Striking distance means your best rank is 11 to 20. Gap means no page of yours in the top 20 while a competitor is in the top 10. Cannibalised means two or more of your pages rank. Protected means you rank 1 to 3. Hold means nothing is flagged.

One limit matters. Each check reads only the first ten results, so ranks of 11 to 20 are not recorded. A topic where your best page sits there reads Gap, not Striking distance. Use the chips above the list to filter by action, each with a count.

Pick a topic to see Our page with its best rank, the Keywords in this topic with your rank for each, and Competing pages. For a cannibalised topic that list is Our competing pages. An Ask Claude box gives you a prompt to paste, because writing the brief is your assistant's job. Watch this page opens the Watchlist form already filled in.

Map

Pick Roots: My tracked keywords, or Keywords I type, one per line up to 50. Choose what each keyword grows into: Related searches, People Also Ask, or AI follow-up searches, which starts from the searches AI answer engines ran for your questions. Set Levels below the roots, 1 to 3, and Keywords per keyword, 1 to 10. A map checks at most 150 keywords, one check each.

Read the result as a Tree or a Table. Each keyword shows Our rank, the #1 domain, difficulty (proxy), whether an AI Overview appeared, and Intent: Alternatives, Comparison, Pricing, Review, How to, Best of or Other. Difficulty is the share of the top 10 results held by very large sites, from 0 to 100. It is a rough guide, not measured ranking difficulty. Download PNG saves the tree as an image in your browser.

Competitors

This tab needs no run. It reads the keywords already checked, from rank tracking and from keyword lab and map runs, and lists each competing domain, most visible first. The columns are Domain, Keywords in top 10, Average position, Keywords where it beats us, AI Overview citations and AI answer citations. The last counts how often each answer engine cited the domain in your latest finished Answer Radar run.

Select a domain to open a panel with its Pages that beat us and the keywords where they do. Content map reads the site's public sitemap, at no cost in checks, and groups pages into Editorial, Templated and Other sections. If the sitemap cannot be read, you get a sentence saying why.

FAQ