How Accurate is Search Volume from YouTube SEO Tools? 🎯
Google Trends for YouTube doesn’t tell us what the absolute search volume is for a given keyword, but they fortunately they do allow us to compare the relative search volume between two keywords. For example, ai cats has 2x the search volume of ai dogs.
Because we know the ratio provided by Google Trends for YouTube is accurate, you can effectively assess the accuracy of the search volume numbers that your current YouTube SEO tool provides! 🧐
In other words, does your YouTube SEO tool also say that ai cats has 2x the search volume of ai dogs? Use the accuracy calculator below to see how accurate your current YouTube SEO tool is, then compare the results to ChannelStudio's 99% accurate YouTube keyword tool.
YouTube SEO tool accuracy calculator
Step 1: Enter two YouTube keywords to compare
Step 2: Enter the relative search volumes that Google Trends for YouTube provides
Step 3: Enter the monthly search volumes your current YouTube SEO tool provides
Step 4: Enter the monthly search volumes that ChannelStudio provides (optional)
Which YouTube SEO tool is most accurate?
Using the method described above, we assessed the accuracy of three of the top YouTube SEO tools.
Our study evaluated the same 50 pairs of keywords for each YouTube keyword tool by comparing the ratio of the absolute search volumes provided by the tool, to the ratio of the relative search volumes in Google Trends for YouTube. These ratios were then plugged into a formula that's commonly used for calculating accuracy, called Symmetric Mean Absolute Percentage Error (SMAPE). You can learn more about our study’s methodology here.
The summary of the study data is displayed below.
The metrics and discussion on this page are based on ChannelStudio's independent study, as well as our team's opinions. It is not our intention to make any claims about the company's displayed in the table or their data collection practices beyond presenting the results of our study. We only intend to present the results of our independent study and shared our opinions about general market practices. We encourage you to evaluate the full dataset yourself to draw your own conclusions. It's important to note that there are many potential definitions of accuracy, and we selected one that lends itself well to comparison against the known-accurate data for relative search volume among keywords provided about YouTube by Google Trends. Our study did not assess the accuracy of absolute search volume, as there is no known-accurate source to compare to, and we concede that it's hypothetically possible that the companies displayed could have higher accuracy with regard to absolute search volume. All trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners and are used for comparative purposes only.
How was the accuracy for each YouTube keyword tool calculated?
We evaluated the same 50 pairs of keywords for each YouTube keyword tool by comparing the ratio of the absolute search volumes provided by the tool, to the ratio of the relative search volumes in Google Trends (filtered to YouTube). These ratios are plugged into a formula that's commonly used for calculating accuracy, called Symmetric Mean Absolute Percentage Error (SMAPE):
For example, Google Trends known-accurate data tells us that “funny dog” has 6 times (6x) more searches on YouTube than “happy dog”. If the keyword tool also indicated that the difference between the terms was 6x, then that keyword pair would be assigned an accuracy score of 100%. If instead the keyword tool indicated the difference was only 3x, then that keyword pair would be assigned a lower accuracy score of 67%:
The accuracy scores for all 50 pairs are then averaged for each tool to provide the accuracy scores displayed in the table above.
How is ChannelStudio's data so accurate?
We know it sounds hard to believe that ChannelStudio's data is 99% accurate when many other YouTube keyword tools are far less accurate — but as our study & calculator above show, it's verifiably true.
To understand why some other YouTube keyword tools are so inaccurate, it's important to know that Google has never offered search volume for YouTube keywords the way they do for Google Search. This has forced many of the popular YouTube keyword tools to estimate YouTube search volume from "clickstream" data. Unfortunately, clickstream data is typically collected from unsuspecting users by companies that sell a "stream" of their users' browsing data to third-party data aggregators. Depending on the size and composition of the sample the data was collected from, clickstream data can be highly skewed and misrepresentative of the actual YouTube search volume.
ChannelStudio’s proprietary statistical method for estimating search volume is based on the sole remaining source-of-truth data available for YouTube — Google Trends. Although Google Trends doesn’t provide absolute search volume (e.g. number of searches per month), it does provide the data that matters most to YouTubers: the relative difference in search volume between terms (e.g. “apples” is searched 10x as much as “pears”). With this comparison data at scale, we are able to estimate YouTube keyword search volume with a high degree of accuracy!
