Conductor's Explorer is your source for research data across the search performance spectrum. You can view content ideas and insights about sites and pages, competitive research, and more—all from just one prompt.
Content Ideation
Use Explorer to connect with your customers. Enter a topic idea you're interested in to reveal performance data and related search terms that your audience is searching for. Then, review the data to learn what phrases and language your audience most often uses to search for and talk about your topic.
You can also research an individual page to generate topic ideas and to find the phrases your audience most often uses to find that page when they search.
Site Research
Use Explorer to investigate domains, subdomains, subfolders, and individual pages. Enter one of these to reveal a host of search performance data about the relevant page or pages. This data is great for understanding your competition's content, as well as your own.
Data in Explorer uses search data from all over the globe. Review which search engines are available in this article.
Where to find it
Click Here ↗️ or follow the path Discover > Explorer in Conductor.
Overview: Exploring Topics
You can review relevant data about a topic and see related topic suggestions based on a phrase you enter into Explorer. After reviewing the data, you can fine-tune your content strategy to address your audience with more precision and relevance.
Generate Topic Reports
- Select the search context for the topic you want to explore.
- Generate a topic report:
- Enter a topic—or multiple topics—for which you want to see a topic report and click Explore. You can enter up to 50 topics at once: enter them manually, separated by commas, paste a comma-separated list, or paste cells from a spreadsheet.
- Click View Report in the History table to see suggestions for a previously explored topic or topics.
- Enter a topic—or multiple topics—for which you want to see a topic report and click Explore. You can enter up to 50 topics at once: enter them manually, separated by commas, paste a comma-separated list, or paste cells from a spreadsheet.
Review the Overview Tab
Note that the Overview tab is not available if you explore multiple topics at once.
Learn more about who your audiences are and what they care about with social data integrated with Conductor's other research data in Explorer’s Topic reports. With the data in the Overview tab, you can see social mentions, engagement, interests, and occupations for the keywords and topics you research, powered by Talkwalker, the market leader in social intelligence. Conductor gathers the last 30 days of data from Talkwalker each time you visit the report.
For the topic you explore, you can see:
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Monthly Search Interest. This data refers to the topic’s level of search interest or popularity over the most recent twelve months. Search interest does not reflect actual search volumes. Instead, the trend line displays data on a scale of 0–100, where 100 is the highest point of interest over the time range. A value of 50 means the keyword has half as much interest, while a value of zero means there is no data. The search interest trend displays the most recent twelve months of data collected from Google Search trends. The Monthly Search Interest widget also includes highlights areas of seasonality.
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Daily Social Mentions. This data refers to the total number of times during a day that people include a given keyword in a social media post.
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Top Keywords:
- Determined by search volume:
- Determined by social mentions:
- Note that you can select any keyword in these tables to track, copy to your clipboard, or get content guidance using the three-dot menu:
- Determined by search volume:
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People Also Ask data:
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Next steps, like getting Content Guidance, adding to an Action, or tracking the keyword:
- Interest by:
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Interests
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Occupations
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Interests
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Regional Interest (United States only)
This widget shows geographic search interest data for the United States. Search interest does not reflect actual search volumes. Instead, it indicates a value on a scale of 0–100, where 100 is the highest point of interest over the time range. A value of 50 means the keyword has half as much interest, while a value of zero means there is no data. -
Sentiment
Conductor's data partner Talkwalker derives Sentiment metrics from news and content websites, blogs, forums, and Twitter. Talkwalker can provide 90% accuracy for Sentiment analysis through interpreting irony and sarcasm across 24 languages. Find out which languages are supported here.
Review the Related Keywords Tab
- The Keyword column shows you the list keywords related to the topic or topics you explored. The first rows reflect the topic or topics you explored. You can use the data here to compare it to the topics suggested by Conductor.
- The Result Types column indicates the different types of content that appear for the keyword. Note that this column will not indicate whether the keyword yields an Events result type.
- The Search Volume and Search Interest Trend columns let you identify the demand for keywords related to this topic based on the monthly search volume in Google.
- The Est. Cost Per Click column indicates the average bid on the keyword in paid strategy. You can use this column to identify keywords to optimize for organic search so your paid team can save on their spend for that keyword.
- The Mentions and Engagement columns include social intelligence data provided through Conductor's integration with Talkwalker. By default, Conductor shows data for 20 keywords from this integration, but you can click Request to see this data for any keyword in the table.
- The Mentions column refers to the total number of times during the last 30 days that people include a given keyword in a social media post.
- The Engagement column refers to the total number of times during the last 30 days in which people have interacted with a social media post that includes a given keyword. This includes likes, shares, retweets, comments, and more.
- The Journey Stage column shows what Conductor thinks is the likely stage in the buyer's journey associated with that the suggested keyword. Refer to this FAQ to learn which words and phrases Conductor uses to determine whether a query is early- or late-stage.
- The Competition column identifies the relative competition each keyword has based on paid bids.
Click the arrow next to a keyword in the list to see the top-five ranked pages:
- If you already track (or have tracked) the keyword in Conductor, the pages shown come from Conductor's data set and include information on keyword group membership and preferred URL. You can also jump to the Keyword Details: Visibility report for the keyword.
- If any of your organization's content appears as one those top-five ranked pages, you can click the link to jump to the Page Details report for that page.
- Review your Next Steps.
Note that the rank shown in this list represents the Standard Rank for the pages, not the True Rank. This means that the rank does not include universal results that might appear on the SERP for the keyword.
Overview: Exploring Sites
You can explore on-demand global search data about a domain, subdomain, subfolder, or individual page using Explorer. Just enter a domain, subdomain, subfolder, or page (even your own!) to see organic search performance and competitive comparison. Then review data about the keywords for which the domain, subdomain, subfolder, or page ranks and the pages ranking on results pages.
- Generate Site Reports
- Review the At a Glance tab for your entered site
- Review the Keywords tab for your entered site
- Review the Pages tabs for your entered site
- Compare data across sites in the At a Glance and Keywords Tabs
Generate Site Reports
Select the search context for the domain, subdomain, subfolder, or page you want to explore.
Then, enter a domain, subdomain, subfolder, or page:
- To explore a new site, enter it in the box at the top of the screen and click Explore.
- To explore a previously-viewed site, find it in the History table below and click View Report.
Review the At a Glance tab for your entered site
If you are not already on the At a Glance tab, click it at the top of the report.
Then, select a date range up to 13 months in addition to the current month for which to see historical data. Note that when you explore a page in a Baidu context, data will always appear from the most recent, complete month. You cannot select a date range.
- Review the following data in the summary bar:
- Total values for number of ranked keywords and Modeled Traffic.
- Distribution of the site's top performing keywords across Conductor's visibility zones (and movement since the last data publication)
- The top traffic-driving keywords for the site.
- The pages (if applicable) for which the site ranks in the top traffic-driving keywords.
Note that data in this summary reflect the most recent data our data provider Semrush can provide. This may be during the current month, in which case we will show that here. For more information about when new data appears in Explorer, refer to the How often does Conductor refresh data in Explorer? FAQ. - View performance over time by reviewing the domain's trend chart. You can choose to see:
- A specific metric:
- The Modeled Traffic associated with the site, trended month-to-month
- The total number of Ranked Keywords, trended month-to-month (if applicable)
- The Visibility Distribution for this site's keywords, trended month-to-month (if applicable)
- A line graph, bar chart, or competitive gap bar chart. You might do this to help show the inflection points in the data. Just select from the icons shown on the widget.
- Data for a specific given month. Hover over the month's bar in the chart:
- A specific metric:
- View ownership of different result types over time in the Number of Owned Result Types trend graph at the bottom of the report. Note that image results are not available in this widget because our data provider Semrush does not support domain-level reporting for image results.
Review the Keywords tab for your entered site
Click the Keywords tab.
Then, select a date range up to 13 months in addition to the current month for which to see historical data. Note that when you explore a page in a Baidu context, data will always appear from the most recent, complete month. You cannot select a date range.
These are the keywords that your site explored ranks for. Note that Conductor's data partner SEMrush refreshes this keyword data as frequently as daily, but no less frequently than monthly. As a result there may be discrepancies in the total number of keywords listed here compared to the total number reported on the At a Glance tab.
Each result in the Ranking Keywords table includes the top-five ranking results, rank change data from the previous time period, and ranking results from the explored domain, subdomain, or subfolder. You can also review which Next Steps are available, such as getting content guidance for the keyword, exploring the keyword, or tracking it.
Each keyword includes any result types that appear for it. Result types the domain owns appears outlined in green. Note that ownership data is not available for the following result types:
- Carousel
- Jobs
Review the Pages tabs for your entered domain, subdomain, or subfolder
Click the Pages tab.
If you are exploring a domain, subdomain, or subfolder, you can review information about the ranking pages that appear in Explorer's index.
You can select a date range up to 13 months in addition to the current month for which to see historical data. Note that when you explore a page in a Baidu context, data will always appear from the most recent, complete month. You cannot select a date range.
For each page listed in the table, you can click the arrow to see the keyword or keywords for which the page ranks. Included for each keyword are:
- The modeled traffic for the page and the change in modeled traffic since the previous time period.
- The corresponding rank and change in rank since the previous time period.
- Search volume during the most recent time period.
Note that any change metrics in the table represent the two most recent months of data published. You can see which month you are reporting on at the top of the table:
Compare data across sites in the At a Glance and Keywords Tabs
You can see a comparison between any two sites. Compare sites to perform actions like:
- Investigating your competition.
- Comparing your performance at a glance.
- Reviewing keywords to identify content for optimization.
To compare a sites, just enter it at the top of the At a Glance or Keywords tab:
Note that you cannot compare pages—only domains, subdomains, and subfolders.
Filter to Focus on the Most Relevant Suggestions
To focus on the most relevant and useful data across Explorer reports to better address your specific goals, you can choose to filter the results in the report's tables.
Filter Your Results
Select from a menu of pre-set filters. You can:
- Click one of the favorite filters in the Your Favorite Saved Filters menu.
- Select a filter from the Saved Filters menu
- Create your own filter, which you can save to use again. You can use the menus in the Filters section to fine-tune which results appear in the table. The available filters depend on the kind of report you are viewing and whether you are on the Keywords or Pages tab in Site reports:
- The Keywords Containing menu lets you include or exclude specific words from the results. This is available on both the Keywords and Pages tabs.
- The Keyword Ranks menu lets you choose filter for keywords based on their ranks across the most recent two time periods. This is available Keywords tab in Sites reports.
- The Highest Rank menu lets you filter for keywords based on their ranks during the most recent time period. This is available in the Pages tab on Sites reports.
- The Result Types menu lets you filter for keywords that generate specific universal result types. This is available in the Keywords tab in Sites reports and in Topic reports.
- The Number of Keywords menu lets you filter for pages that have as few or as many keywords for which it ranks. This is available in the Pages tab in Site reports.
- The Tracking menu lets you include or exclude keywords you already track with Conductor.
- The More Filters menu lets you further fine-tune your filter to show specific results based on monthly search volume, cost per click, and other characteristics related to the results, such as:
- Long Tail Keywords. Find keywords that are made up of at least 3 words. Available in the Related Keywords tab in Topic reports and the Keywords tab in Site reports.
- Question Keywords. Find question based keywords that include words like: "who", "what", "when", "where", "best", etc. Available in the Related Keywords tab in Topic reports and the Keywords tab in Site reports.
- Customer Journey Stage. Find keywords from the stage of the buyer's journey that match early- or late-stage keywords. Refer to this FAQ to learn which words and phrases Conductor uses to determine whether a query is early- or late-stage. Available in the Related Keywords tab in Topic reports and the Keywords tab in Site reports.
- Phrase Match. Find keywords that include each word from the explored term. In these keywords, the words from the explored term may appear before or after other words.
- Available in the Related Keywords tab in Topic reports.
- The Keywords Containing menu lets you include or exclude specific words from the results. This is available on both the Keywords and Pages tabs.
Save and Manage Filters
Want to save a filter that you create? After choosing your filter parameters:
- Click Save Filter. This button appears after you have applied one or more filters to your results.
The Create a Saved Filter form appears. - Enter a name for the filter.
- Choose whether the filter is Personal (it will appear only for you) or Shared (it will appear for all users in your account).
- Choose to add the filter to your Favorites, which appear as quick filters at the top of the section.
- Click Save.
Want to add or remove a favorite filter from the Your Favorite Saved Filters section? Just click the star in the Saved Filters menu.
Take Action on Results in Explorer
Add widgets to workspaces
As you can throughout Conductor, you can add views of data to workspaces by clicking the Add to workspace icon.
Note that:
- Widgets from Site reports update dynamically to always represent the most recent, full month of data.
- Widgets from the Overview tab in Topic reports update dynamically to represent either the most recent 30 days of data or 12 months of data (depending on the widget).
- Widgets from the Related Keywords tab in topic reports will update dynamically.
Act on Keyword Information in Explorer
If a keyword appears as a link in Explorer, you already track (or have tracked) the keyword in Conductor.
You can click the three-dot menu and select from a number of options to take action.
Don't see keywords as links even though you track them? Or, maybe you see links for keywords you didn't think you tracked? Refer to the Why don't keywords I track with Conductor appear in Explorer as tracked? FAQ below.
Track Keywords You Discover
To add a single keyword, click the three-dot menu and select Track this keyword.
To add multiple keywords, select the check box next to each and then click Track Keywords:
From the form that appears, you can also add the keyword to a keyword group in Conductor and identify the search engines, locations, and devices you want to track for it:
Copy Keywords to Your Clipboard
To facilitate how you deliver information to others in your organization, you can copy keywords in the table to your clipboard. Copying your suggestions allows you to easily paste the keywords into documents (such as creative briefs) or spreadsheets (such as work lists) to share with your team or others in your organization who need keyword and content optimization insights from Conductor. To do this:
Select the keywords you want to copy in the table and click Copy to Clipboard.
You can then open the document, spreadsheet, or other file where you want to add the suggestions and paste them.
Add Information to Conductor Actions
You can expedite your content creation workflow by creating smart briefs or other follow-up actions in Conductor that can be sent seamlessly to the relevant team. You can create these briefs then download them as .doc files or send them to your team's preferred task management platform through Conductor Actions.
Using Explorer
- Keyword Research for a topic with Explorer
- Using competitive insights to guide content briefs
- Perform competitive research with Conductor's keyword index
- Improve your website's visibility with competitive insights
FAQs
What and how much data can I see with Explorer?
Site Reports
- The At a Glance tab includes all the data for the entered domain, subdomain, subfolder, or page that our data provider Semrush has available.
- The Keywords tab includes:
- For the current month, a sample of up to 10,000 keywords (determined by top monthly search volume)—or the full data set up to 2,000,000 keywords by request and depending on custom pricing—for any domains, subdomains, subfolders, and pages.
- For previous months, up to 13 months of historical data. By default, you'll see a sample of up to 10,000 keywords (determined by top monthly search volume). However, if you are comparing months during which you requested the full data set (up to 2,000,000 as described above), you will see all that previously requested data in comparison.
- For the current month, a sample of up to 10,000 keywords (determined by top monthly search volume)—or the full data set up to 2,000,000 keywords by request and depending on custom pricing—for any domains, subdomains, subfolders, and pages.
Topic Reports
- View and export up to 1,000 results for any keyword phrase.
- Review historical data up to:
- 12 months for monthly search volume
- 30 days for social mentions
- 3 years for seasonality insights
Why does Explorer's Domain reports say my domain ranks for more keywords than the number of keywords that appear in the report?
The number that appears at the top-left of the keywords tab that says "this domain ranked for [#] of keywords..." refers to the number of times your domain appears in search results.
The number that appears to the top-right that says "Showing [#] Keywords" refers to the number of distinct keywords your site ranks for.
Your site can appear in a SERP multiple times—this is especially common for branded terms—so you’re likely to see the number on the left be higher than the number of distinct keywords (on the right) your site ranks for.
From which search engines are Questions drawn in Explorer reports?
You can filter keyword-based results in Explorer reports to find "Question"-relevant keywords that include words like: "who", "what", "when", "where", "best", etc. This can help you identify keyword searches you might want to target for Answer Box results.
This filter is available in all search engines that use the following languages:
- Dutch
- English
- French
- German
- Italian
- Portuguese
- Spanish
How does the Explorer report define what early- and late-stage topics are?
In the Explorer report, to determine whether a stage is "early", Conductor looks for search phrases listed below. Suggested keywords that do not match a term like these are considered "late". Note that this data is limited to English-language contexts:
101, about, advantage, advice, analysis, analyze, answer, archive, article, assess, best, brand, brief, career, catalog, checklist, comment, companies, company, compare, comparison, condition, contrast, coverage, data, definition, description, designer, detail, direction, directory, document, dossier, download, employ, evidence, example, explain, explained, explaining, explanation, facts, feature, finest, firm, first, forum, gear, guidance, guide, help, hire, hiring, how, idea, improve, improving, index, info, information, ingredient, instruction, interpretation, inventory, job, knowledge, latest, leading, learn, lesson, list, location, long term, long-term, manufacturer, meaning, menu, model, myself, narrative, need, newest, news, opinion, outstanding, pdf, perfect, pictures, platform, policies, policy, ppt, premium, presentation, product, profession, program, proposal, provider, quality, rating, recent, recommendation, reference, report, review, series, service, short term, short-term, site, slide, software, specification, specs, statement, study, suggest, summary, support, system, table, technology, testimony, tip, tool, top, topp, training, tutorial, type, versus, video, videos, vocation, want, warning, website, what, when, where, white paper, who, why, without
Are keyword results in Explorer specific to a web property you track in Conductor?
No, the same topic results in the Explorer report would appear for any web property for a given topic or URL. However, results do depend on the search engine context you are currently viewing. For example, you can expect different results for Google US from the results for Google Canada.
Why don't keywords I track with Conductor appear in Explorer as tracked?
When you track a keyword with Conductor—and that keyword appears in Explorer's results—you'll see it hyperlinked so you can jump to the Keyword Details: Visibility report.
By default, the first web property you track with Conductor Intelligence will be the web property for which you will see linked keywords. If you are exploring keywords in search contexts that don't match that default web property, they won't appear as linked. However, you can configure the default web property in your user profile.
Note also that because Explorer represents country-level and desktop-specific keyword data, only keywords you track at the country level and on desktop appear as hyperlinked, even if you track them in more specific locations or on other devices.
Where does Conductor source its Cost per Click (CPC) data?
Conductor gathers CPC data through its partnership with Semrush.
Why do some topics and sites not have results?
Results for topic queries are limited to the data we receive from Semrush's search index. Semrush doesn't provide every possible query, so Conductor cannot always include suggestions for every explored term (especially for some specialty terms and long-tail phrases) nor for every page (especially pages with low traffic).
If no results are available for a common phrase, try searching for another version of the phrase such as the:
- Plural form (if the phrase is singular). For example, "credit cards" instead of "credit card".
- Singular form (if the phrase is plural). For example, "credit card" instead of "credit cards".
- Root word (if there is a prefix or suffix). For example, "doodle" instead of "doodler".
Why doesn't the Monthly Search Interest trend always include the months for the data in the chart?
We gather data you see in the Monthly Search Interest widget on Topic Overview from two different sources. One source includes the specific month with data while the other does not.
Regardless of data source, the chart always shows the most recent 12, full months of data we receive from our data providers. The data point for the most recent month will appear on the far right.
Which languages can I see Sentiment data for in Explorer's Topic Overview reports?
Conductor's data partner Talkwalker provides Sentiment data for the following 24 languages:
- Albanian
- Arabic
- Chinese
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Finnish
- Flemish
- French
- German
- Hungarian
- Italian
- Korean
- Malay
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Slovak
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Turkish
When I enter a topic, widgets in the Overview tab say "No historical data available for this topic". Why?
For the Overview tab in Topic reports, Conductor makes live requests to various data providers. Therefore, there might be a different root cause if no data appears in each widget, and appears with the "No historical data available for this topic" message.
Two common reasons that might result in this message include:
- The data provider has no data for the topic. In this case, Conductor can't and won't show data for the topic until the data provider has the data to send for the request.
- The data provider cannot provide data for a live call, because they limit the number of times Conductor users can make requests for the data. In this case, consider waiting a minute and then refresh your browser. A new live request will be created for the data.
Is there a limit to the number of topic I can research at once?
For most languages, the number is about 50. Note that the actual number of topics you can enter depends on a variety of technical processes that happen in the background. One noteworthy example is language. Some languages require encoding in Conductor's backend that results in less space for topic generation. In the event you run into issues, consider reducing the total number of topics you are researching at once.
How do I filter for (or filter out) branded terms?
As you are researching keywords in Explorer, you can refine the results to focus on specific words or phrases. This can be particularly useful to filter out your branded keywords or to filter to include only branded keywords.
To do this, just use the Keywords Containing filter to adjust the results in the table of keyword.
And remember, if you use the same filter regularly, you can create a saved filter for you and your team to reuse.
Why filter out branded keywords?
You might filter out branded keywords to:
- Identify opportunities to engage with audiences who might not be familiar with your brand.
- Understand how people think about your the kinds of products and services you offer in general—separate from how they feel about your specific products and services.
Why filter to show only branded keywords?
You might want to focus only on branded keywords if you want to investigate the language your audience uses when then are searching for your products and services.
How do I focus my research in Explorer on my tracked keywords?
As you are researching keywords in Explorer, you can refine the results to focus on specific words or phrases. This can be particularly useful to filter to see only the keywords you track with Conductor Intelligence or only the keywords you do not track.
To do this, you can use the Tracking filter to select which keywords you want to see Explorer’s data for.
Keep in mind that, depending on the report you are reviewing in Explorer, this filter might appear under More Filters!
Why filter for only tracked keywords?
You might want to research only tracked keywords if you want to focus on the keywords you've already established as important for your organization's online visibility.
Why filter for only untracked keywords?
You might want to research only untracked keywords if you want to focus on discovering new topics you aren’t already aware of—and which might be valuable keywords to target with content.
Not seeing keywords appearing as tracked?
Review the Why don't keywords I track with Conductor appear in Explorer as tracked? FAQ for more information.