Can You Do Free Keyword Research Without Paid Tools?

Google Keyword Planner shows volume ranges like 0 to 100 and 1,000 to 10,000 to anyone with a free Google Ads account and no active campaign. Add four other free methods and free keyword research covers everything paid tools do for keyword discovery, if not always with the same precision.

Five Ways To Find Keywords And Volume Without Paying

Free keyword research is possible through five methods that have stayed free for years: Google Keyword Planner, a search-volume browser extension, the free keyword generators from Ahrefs and Semrush, the Google Search Console impressions trick, and Google Trends. Each answers a different question, and together they cover discovery, prioritization, and trend checking without a paid SEO subscription.

The five methods compared:

How To Unlock Google Keyword Planner Without Running Ads

Yes, you can access Google Keyword Planner without paying for ads: create a Google Ads account but skip the campaign step, and the tool opens with no billing required. The signup flow pushes you toward launching a campaign, but two setup paths bypass it entirely, and only the volume precision changes, not the keyword data.

Two paths get you there:

1. During signup, click "Switch to Expert Mode", which skips the campaign wizard.
2. Or, in newer versions of the signup, choose the clearer option: **"Create an account without a campaign."

Either way you reach the tool with an empty billing setup.

Inside Keyword Planner, go to the Tools section, open Keyword Planner, and choose "Discover new keywords." You can enter several seed terms at once, set the country and language, and get a list of related keywords with their monthly search volumes and recent trend direction. The related list is the real value: searching "football" also returns terms like club names and player names that never contain the seed word, which most SEO tools miss because they filter results to exact seed matches.

One detail matters. An account with at least some historical ad spend sees exact volumes. A brand-new account with no campaigns sees ranges:

Account type	Volume shown	Example
Some historical ad spend	Exact number	2,300/month
Brand-new, no campaigns	Range	0 to 100/month
Brand-new, no campaigns	Range	100 to 1,000/month
Brand-new, no campaigns	Range	1,000 to 10,000/month

The ranges still tell you whether a keyword is small, medium, or large, and the keyword ideas themselves, which matter more than the exact number, are complete.

Does A Free Browser Extension Show Search Volume?

A browser extension can show a keyword's monthly search volume directly on the Google results page, with related keywords and their volumes listed below. The speaker in the video, whose notes credit Dev Doido do canal do youtube, demonstrates one that reports about one million monthly searches for "football" in the United States and an unlimited number of lookups, but he links the exact extension in a pinned comment because several extensions share the same name.

Treat the numbers as estimates. The speaker says he trusts data straight from Google Ads more than the extension because it is unclear where the extension sources its volumes, though he finds the figures "normally not too wrong." If you avoid installing extensions entirely, the next method covers the same data from brands you already know.

What Do The Free Ahrefs And Semrush Keyword Tools Give You?

Ahrefs and Semrush, the two largest commercial SEO platforms, both run free keyword generator tools on their websites that need no account. The Ahrefs free keyword generator returns keyword ideas containing your seed term, volume ranges, and a keyword difficulty estimate. The Semrush free tool does the same and adds questions-format keywords, which are useful for blog topics and for understanding customer pain points.

In the video, searching "football academy" for the United Kingdom on the Ahrefs generator returns a list of matching terms with a volume range rather than an exact figure. The speaker's assessment is that when the tool says a keyword sits around a number, the true figure is probably near it. Compared with Keyword Planner, the trade is precision for convenience: no account setup, plus the difficulty score that Keyword Planner does not offer. Compare the two tools yourself at the Ahrefs free keyword generator and the Semrush keyword tools.

How Does The Google Search Console Impressions Trick Work?

Google Search Console can reveal the live search volume of a keyword you already rank for, using its free performance reports. You set a 28-day window, filter to one query and one page, and read the impressions count as an approximate monthly search volume. It works only for keywords where you already hold a top-10 position.

Set the date range to the last 28 days, filter queries to your exact keyword, and filter pages to the specific URL. If the average position is between 1 and 10, the impressions count approximates the number of searches for that keyword in that month.

The logic is simple: Google loads ten results for every search, so every page ranking in the top 10 earns one impression per search. If you held a top-10 position throughout the period, impressions track searches almost one to one. This is data no third-party tool has, because it is current-month behavior rather than a trailing 12-month average.

1. Open Search Console and set the date range to the last 28 days.
2. Filter queries to your exact keyword.
3. Filter pages to the specific URL ranking for it.
4. If the average position is between 1 and 10, read impressions as the approximate monthly search volume.

Know the limits. The trick only works when you already rank in the top 10, so it cannot research new keywords. And the estimate can run slightly low, because if Google drops your page from the results for a single day without pushing the average position above 10, that day's impressions vanish while the position filter still passes. The speaker calls this rare and considers the assumption good in practice, but says not to treat the number as exact.

What Is Google Trends Actually Showing You?

Google Trends shows relative search interest, not search volume. Every number you see is a normalized score from 0 to 100 that describes how popular a term was at a given moment compared with its own best and worst points in the period you selected. It answers "is interest rising or falling?", never "how many people searched?".

Google's free tool for comparing search interest over time displays relative interest on a 0 to 100 scale, never absolute volume. Data goes back to 2004 when you select the "all time" range. A reading of 18 for January 2019 does not mean 18 searches; it means interest sat at 18 percent of the distance between the term's lowest and highest points in the selected period.

Use Trends to judge direction, not size. If a term's curve climbs steadily, its real volume is growing even though the scale hides whether the peak represents hundreds or millions of searches. The tool also lists related keywords with their own interest curves, so you can click through from a broad topic to narrower subtopics and check each one.

Feature	What it tells you	Best used for
Interest-over-time curve	Direction of demand, 0–100 relative scale	Spotting growth or decline in a topic
Related keywords	Adjacent terms with their own curves	Expanding a broad topic into subtopics
Rising queries	Terms spiking, e.g. within the last 24 hours	Catching early coverage and link opportunities

The feature worth learning is rising queries. Set the window to the last 24 hours and open the rising queries list: terms where Google detected a spike in searches within the last day. Writing about a spiking topic before competitors notice is a way to pick up early coverage and links, and it costs nothing to check.

Which Method Should You Use, And What Are The Limits?

Start with Keyword Planner for discovery, because it returns the largest related-keyword lists straight from Google. Layer the free generators when you want difficulty scores and question keywords. Use Search Console for live volume on keywords you rank for, and Trends for direction and breakout topics. No single free method gives exact volume for any keyword on demand; that convenience is what paid subscriptions sell.

The accuracy hierarchy, according to the speaker's own experience, runs: Search Console impressions for current months on keywords you rank for, then Keyword Planner, then the third-party free tools. The practical limit of free keyword research is volume ranges instead of exact figures and no access to advanced metrics like clickstream-based click potential. For most site owners choosing what to write next, ranges plus difficulty scores plus trend direction are enough to prioritize.

FAQ

• Is free keyword research accurate enough to rely on? Yes, with scope. Keyword Planner comes from Google itself, and Search Console impressions are live data. The free third-party generators give ranges rather than exact numbers, but the speaker finds those ranges generally close. Treat any volume figure, free or paid, as a 12-month average estimate rather than a guarantee.
• Do I need to spend money on Google Ads to use Keyword Planner? No. You create a Google Ads account without a campaign, either through "Switch to Expert Mode" during signup or the "Create an account without a campaign" option. Expect to see volume ranges such as 0 to 100 instead of exact figures until you run at least some ads.
• Can Search Console tell me the volume of any keyword? No. The impressions trick works only for keywords where your page already ranks in positions 1 to 10 on average. It is best for validating live monthly volume on content you have already published.
• What is the difference between Keyword Planner and Google Trends volumes? Keyword Planner reports estimated monthly search counts or ranges for a country and language. Google Trends reports relative interest from 0 to 100 against the term's own historical high and low, which shows direction over time but never the actual number of searches.
• Will these free methods ever disappear behind a paywall? They have stayed free since at least 2015 according to the speaker, and the incentives support that: Keyword Planner serves advertisers, Search Console serves site owners, and the free generators from Ahrefs and Semrush funnel users toward their paid products. Google can change the signup interface at any time, so expect UI changes even if the tools remain free.

Turn Your Own Video Knowledge Into A Written Guide

This article exists because a twelve-minute video explaining five free keyword research methods deserved a page people can scan, quote, and return to. If you have that kind of practical knowledge sitting in your own YouTube videos, tutorials, interviews, or commentary, Skala Blog turns it into a structured written article: paste the video URL, get a transcription, and generate an article ready to edit and publish. Readers who found this piece through search can find yours the same way.

Source video