DataForSEO Brain

Keywords Data API

3 min read

Keywords Data API

Search volume, CPC, competition, and keyword discovery sourced straight from Google Ads and Bing Ads. Sits under DataForSEO Brain → Concepts.

Overview

The Keywords Data API exposes advertiser-grade keyword metrics from the two big ad platforms. The Google Ads sub-API is sourced from the latest Google Ads API, and the Bing sub-API is sourced from Microsoft Advertising. Unlike DataForSEO Labs (which uses DataForSEO’s own clickstream-blended database), Keywords Data passes through the ad networks’ own numbers, so it is the canonical source for paid-search planning signals: average monthly search volume, top-of-page bids, CPC, and competition. It supports both Live and Standard (Task POST / Tasks Ready / Task GET) methods.

What it covers

Google Ads (/v3/keywords_data/google_ads/):

  • search_volume: volume, competition, competition_index, CPC, and 12-month monthly_searches for up to 1,000 keywords.
  • keywords_for_site: up to 2,000 keyword suggestions for a domain or page, with keyword_annotations concept groups.
  • keywords_for_keywords: up to 20,000 suggestions from up to 20 seed keywords (max 80 chars each).
  • ad_traffic_by_keywords: forecast of average_cpc, cost, and clicks for a given bid and match (exact/broad/phrase). Note impressions and ctr are deprecated and return null.

Bing Ads (/v3/keywords_data/bing/):

  • search_volume and search_volume_history (monthly 24 months, weekly 15 weeks, daily 45 days).
  • keywords_for_site (max 3,000 returned) and keywords_for_keywords (up to 200 seeds, 3,000 suggestions).
  • keyword_performance (clicks, impressions, average_cpc, ctr by ad_position, previous month).
  • keyword_suggestions_for_url (confidence_score 0.0-1.0) and audience_estimation (reach, est_impressions, suggested_bid using Microsoft/LinkedIn targeting dimensions).

Key parameters / inputs

fieldnotes
keywordsarray; Google search_volume max 1000, keywords_for_keywords max 20 seeds; Bing up to 1000
targetdomain or URL for keywords_for_site / suggestions_for_url
location_* / language_*targeting; Bing languages limited to English, French, German (en/fr/de)
bid / matchrequired for Google ad_traffic_by_keywords (exact/broad/phrase)
date_from / date_tohistory window; Google 4 years, Bing 24 months
search_partnersinclude Google or Bing/Yahoo/AOL partner networks; default false
sort_byrelevance, search_volume, competition_index, bid metrics

Response / what you get back

Per-keyword results return keyword, search_volume, competition (Google: LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH; Bing: float 0.1/0.5/0.9), competition_index (0-100, Google), cpc, low_top_of_page_bid and high_top_of_page_bid (Google), and monthly_searches[] (year, month, search_volume). Google keywords_for_site adds keyword_annotations. Bing audience_estimation returns range objects (est_audience_size, est_clicks, est_spend, suggested_bid, suggested_budget).

Cost & method notes

  • Charged per request regardless of keyword count: the price for 1 or 1,000 keywords is the same. In the cost log, Google Ads search_volume and keywords_for_site each cost 0.075.
  • Standard queue is cheaper than Live for bulk jobs. See cap-task-vs-live-execution and cap-queue-priority-cost-model.

When to use / how it fits

Keywords Data is step one of play-keyword-research-workflow: pull authoritative volume and bids, then expand and score ideas in cap-labs-keyword-research. Bing data feeds plat-bing-search. The Google Ads upstream is profiled in ent-google-ads-keyword-planner. For when to prefer cheaper pre-indexed Labs data over live ad-network calls, see dec-labs-vs-live-apis and the router in dec-which-api-for-which-job.

Gotchas / limits

  • Google Ads Live endpoints are throttled to 12 requests per minute per account, far tighter than the platform-wide 2000 calls/min; Bing allows 2000 calls/min.
  • Google Ads returns combined volume for groups of similar keywords and may return no data for some groups; certain UTF symbols and emojis are rejected.
  • Bing supports only English, French, German on several endpoints; Bing performance data updates after the 3rd of each month.
  • Bing keyword_performance docs quote both a 1,000 and a 2,500 keyword cap; treat 1,000 as the safe limit until the discrepancy is resolved.
  • Google history spans 4 years; Bing spans 24 months.

Sources

Graph View

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