Every rating on searchterms.com is our own editorial assessment — not a vendor-supplied score, and not a number we were paid to give. This page explains exactly how we arrive at it, and just as importantly, what our ratings are not.
What we’re scoring
We score each tool for one job: helping you find the real search terms your audience uses, judge how hard they are to rank for, and turn them into a plan. A tool can be brilliant at backlinks or technical audits and still score modestly here if keyword and search-term research isn’t its strength. Our ratings are relative to the other tools on this site, not to the entire SEO software market.
The four criteria we weigh
Each tool gets a score out of 5, built from four weighted criteria:
- Database size & coverage (30%) — how many keywords and search terms the tool tracks, across how many countries and search engines, and how well it surfaces long-tail variations.
- Data quality (30%) — how trustworthy the volume, difficulty, and intent data is, based on the tool’s documented methodology, third-party accuracy studies, and the consensus of experienced SEOs.
- Ease of use (20%) — how quickly someone can go from a seed term to a usable list of winnable keywords, including the clarity of the interface and the learning curve.
- Value for money (20%) — what you get relative to the entry price, including free plans, trials, and how pricing scales as your needs grow.
Where our assessment comes from
We are transparent about this because Google’s guidance — and basic honesty — demand it. Our assessments draw on:
- Hands-on use of the tools where we have access, and their free trials and free tiers;
- Each vendor’s own published documentation, feature lists, and pricing;
- Independent accuracy studies and well-regarded expert reviews;
- The aggregated experience of working SEOs, marketers, and the wider community.
We do not publish invented test results or fabricated “lab” numbers. When we describe what a tool is good at, it reflects documented capability and informed judgement, not a staged benchmark we never ran. Where a claim depends on a number that changes often — pricing, database size — we point you to the vendor to confirm the current figure.
How money does (and doesn’t) factor in
searchterms.com earns affiliate commissions when you buy through some of our links, at no extra cost to you. That commission never buys a higher rating or a better placement. The clearest proof: we rank and review tools that pay us nothing. Ahrefs, the Google Keyword Planner, and AnswerThePublic have no affiliate program with us, yet they’re here on merit — and Ahrefs sits near the very top. See our affiliate disclosure for the full picture.
How often we update
Pricing and features in this space change frequently. We review our rankings and re-check pricing periodically and date each update. If you spot something out of date or wrong, please tell us — corrections make the site better for everyone.
What our ratings are not
They are not a guarantee, not financial advice, and not a substitute for trying a tool yourself. Every tool here offers a free trial or free tier for exactly that reason: the best way to know if a tool fits your workflow is to spend twenty minutes in it with your own seed terms.