Short answer: “Competition” in Google Keyword Planner shows how competitive ad placement is for a keyword: how many of the available ad slots advertisers fill. It is a Google Ads metric. It does not tell you how hard it is to rank organically. That difference is where most keyword research goes wrong.
The Competition metric in one table
| Column in Keyword Planner | What it measures | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Competition | How competitive ad placement is | Low / Medium / High |
| Competition (indexed value) | The same thing as a number: ad slots filled ÷ ad slots available | 0–100 |
| Avg. monthly searches | Average monthly searches over the past 12 months | Exact number or a range |
| Top of page bid (low / high range) | What advertisers have paid to appear at the top | In your currency |
All four depend on the location, language and network settings you chose in Keyword Planner. Change Greece to the United States and every number changes.
Low, medium and high: what they mean
The text label is simply the indexed value grouped into three bands:
| Label | Indexed value | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Low | 0–33 | Few advertisers compete; ad slots often go unfilled |
| Medium | 34–66 | Some advertisers compete |
| High | 67–100 | Most ad slots are filled; strong commercial interest |
If you see a dash (–), Google doesn’t have enough data for that keyword.
How to see the indexed value: it’s hidden by default. In Keyword Planner’s results, open the column settings and turn on “Competition (indexed value)”.
What “competition” does NOT mean
Competition is about advertisers, not websites. A keyword can be:
– High competition, easy to rank organically. Lots of advertisers bid on “emergency plumber Heraklion”, but few local sites have a good page for it.
– Low competition, very hard to rank. Hardly anyone advertises on “what is SEO”, but the organic results are dominated by huge, authoritative sites.
So read High competition as “people make money from this search”, not “this is hard to rank for”. For organic difficulty you need other signals (see below).
Avg. monthly searches: why you often see ranges
Avg. monthly searches is the average number of searches per month over the last 12 months, for your chosen locations. Accounts with little or no ad spend often see ranges like “1K–10K” instead of exact numbers.
How to read them:
– Treat ranges as a rough order of size, not an exact figure.
– Check the trend (the 3-month and year-over-year change columns) and Google Trends for seasonality.
– Compare keywords with each other, rather than treating one number as precise.
How to use Keyword Planner data to pick SEO keywords
Here’s a practical process that combines Keyword Planner with what’s actually in the search results:
- Build a list. Start from your services and products, then use Keyword Planner’s “Discover new keywords” to expand it. Add the questions customers actually ask you.
- Filter by relevance first. Remove anything you wouldn’t want a customer to find you for, however big the volume.
- Read the commercial signal. High competition and a high top-of-page bid mean the search makes money. These are worth targeting if the intent matches your offer.
- Check search intent. Google the keyword. Are the top results guides, product pages, local businesses or videos? Your page has to be the same type to compete.
- Estimate organic difficulty. Look at who ranks on page 1 (big brands or small sites?), use a keyword-difficulty tool if you have one, and check how much content targets the exact phrase. Our search demand vs supply guide explains a quick ratio for this.
- Prioritise. The best targets have clear intent, enough searches to matter, a commercial signal, and a page 1 you can realistically compete with. These are often long-tail phrases (“woocommerce developer for b2b store” rather than “woocommerce”).
- Map one main keyword to one page. Group close variants together, so pages don’t compete with each other.
- Measure. After publishing, Google Search Console shows the real searches you appear for, often more useful than any estimate.
Example (illustrative numbers)
| Keyword | Avg. monthly searches | Competition | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| running shoes | 100K–1M | High | Huge, but dominated by big retailers. Skip for a small shop |
| best running shoes for flat feet | 1K–10K | High | Clear buying intent and smaller sites rank. Good target |
| how to clean running shoes | 1K–10K | Low | No ad value, but a useful guide for a shoe shop’s blog |
Other metrics worth combining
- Keyword difficulty (KD) from SEO tools: estimates organic difficulty, mainly from backlinks.
- Search intent: informational, commercial, transactional or navigational.
- Trend: rising, stable or seasonal (Google Trends).
- Top of page bid: a quick sign of how much a click is worth.
- Your own Search Console data: the most reliable source once your site has some impressions.
No single number decides. Competition tells you about money, avg. monthly searches about demand, and the search results themselves about difficulty.
Frequently asked questions
What does “competition” mean in Google Keyword Planner?
How competitive ad placement is for a keyword in Google Ads, based on how many available ad slots are filled. It is Low, Medium or High, or 0–100 as an indexed value.
What is a good competition index in Keyword Planner?
For ads, lower means cheaper and easier placement. For SEO there’s no “good” value: high competition simply signals commercial value, not organic difficulty.
How is Competition (indexed value) calculated?
Google divides the number of ad slots filled by the total ad slots available for that keyword, for your chosen locations and network, on a 0–100 scale.
Does Keyword Planner competition affect SEO?
Not directly. It measures advertisers. Use it as a sign of commercial intent, and judge organic difficulty from the search results and SEO tools.
Why does Keyword Planner show search ranges instead of exact numbers?
Accounts with low or no ad spend usually see ranges such as 1K–10K. Use them to compare keywords rather than as precise figures.
Need keyword research done properly for a new or existing site? It’s part of our technical SEO work. Get in touch.