DataForSEO Brain

Labs Keyword Research (Capability)

4 min read

Labs Keyword Research (Capability)

The DataForSEO Labs keyword-research endpoints turn one seed keyword or domain into thousands of scored keyword ideas from a pre-indexed in-house database, across Google, Amazon, Google Play, and the App Store. Sits under DataForSEO Brain → Concepts.

Overview

Labs is DataForSEO’s analytical layer that queries a pre-indexed database rather than live-scraping a SERP. The keyword-research family expands a seed into ideas, suggestions, and related terms, then enriches each with search volume, CPC, competition, keyword difficulty, and search intent. Because the data is pre-computed, these endpoints are cheaper and faster than live SERP or Keywords Data calls, at the cost of slight staleness (the database updates periodically). All endpoints are Live/synchronous POST calls under /v3/dataforseo_labs/{engine}/{function}/live.

What it covers

  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/keyword_ideas/live - search terms relevant to the product/service categories of up to 200 seed keywords.
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/keyword_suggestions/live - full-text long-tail queries that contain a single seed keyword.
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/related_keywords/live - keywords from the “searches related to” SERP block via depth-first search (depth 0-4 yields roughly 1, 8, 72, 584, 4680 keywords).
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/keyword_overview/live - consolidated metrics (CPC, competition, volume, intent, SERP, backlinks) for up to 700 keywords.
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/bulk_keyword_difficulty/live - keyword difficulty (0-100 logarithmic) for up to 1000 keywords per call.
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/search_intent/live - informational/navigational/commercial/transactional classification with probability for up to 1000 keywords.
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/historical_keyword_data/live - month-by-month volume/CPC/competition history.
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/keywords_for_site/live - keywords a target domain ranks for, with volume and 12-month trend.
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/amazon/related_keywords/live and /v3/dataforseo_labs/amazon/bulk_search_volume/live - Amazon “Related Searches” expansion and bulk Amazon volume (up to 1000 keywords).
  • /v3/dataforseo_labs/apple/keywords_for_app/live and /v3/dataforseo_labs/google/keywords_for_app/live - keywords an App Store or Google Play app ranks for (ASO).

Key parameters / inputs

fieldnotes
keywords / keywordseed input; UTF-8, lowercased; max 200 (ideas), 700 (overview/historical), 1000 (bulk difficulty, search intent)
target / app_iddomain (keywords_for_site) or numeric/package app id (keywords_for_app)
location_code / location_nameone location identifier required
language_code / language_nameone language identifier required
include_clickstream_dataadds clickstream metrics; doubles the cost; default false
include_serp_inforeturns SERP data per keyword; default false
depthrelated_keywords search depth 0-4
filters / order_by / limit / offset / offset_tokenmax 8 filters, max 3 sort rules, limit up to 1000, offset_token for >10000 results

Response / what you get back

Each item carries keyword_info.search_volume, keyword_info.competition, keyword_info.competition_level (LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH), and keyword_info.cpc. Difficulty arrives as keyword_properties.keyword_difficulty and grouping as keyword_properties.core_keyword. Intent is search_intent_info.main_intent. Link context comes via avg_backlinks_info.backlinks and avg_backlinks_info.referring_domains, and SERP weight via serp_info.se_results_count. Clickstream and Bing-normalized variants appear as keyword_info_normalized_with_clickstream.search_volume and keyword_info_normalized_with_bing.search_volume. App endpoints add items[].ranked_serp_element.serp_item.rank_absolute.

Cost & method notes

  • All endpoints are Live/synchronous; billing is per request. The live cost log shows keyword_ideas, keyword_suggestions, related_keywords, keywords_for_site, and amazon related_keywords at 0.0101; and search_intent at $0.0011.
  • include_clickstream_data: true doubles the cost where supported. Bulk difficulty and search intent have no clickstream option.
  • Labs is cheaper than live cap-keywords-data-api volume calls (which cost $0.075 per request in the same log) but the figures derive from a pre-indexed database. See dec-labs-vs-live-apis.

When to use / how it fits

This is the engine of play-keyword-research-workflow (seed → ideas/related → difficulty/intent → prioritize) and feeds play-content-strategy-brief and play-ecommerce-product-research. For job-to-endpoint routing use dec-which-api-for-which-job. Google Ads metrics here trace back to ent-google-ads-keyword-planner, and clickstream-normalized volumes to ent-clickstream-data.

Gotchas / limits

  • 2000 API calls/min, max 30 simultaneous requests across Labs.
  • App keyword endpoints support US location and English language only; app ids are numeric for the App Store and package-name format for Google Play.
  • Amazon related_keywords covers US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and UAE; amazon bulk_search_volume covers a broader set of 16 marketplaces (US, UK, CA, AU, DE, FR, IT, ES, NL, AT, IN, MX, SG, EG, SA, UAE).
  • offset is not recommended past 10000 results; switch to offset_token.
  • Data is pre-indexed, so it can lag live SERPs; weigh against cap-serp-api when freshness matters.

Sources

Graph View

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