What searches reveal that keyword lists don't

Here's something I noticed while reviewing search data for a coaching business.

In the keyword report, their top term was "executive coaching." Clean, professional, exactly what they'd expect.

But in the raw search terms — the actual things people typed — I saw searches like:

"Is executive coaching worth the money"

"Executive coaching feels like a scam"

"My boss wants me to get a coach"

"How to tell if you need coaching or therapy"

That last type of query appeared multiple times in various forms. People genuinely weren't sure if they needed a business coach or a therapist. The keyword "executive coaching" doesn't tell you that. But it's massively useful information if you're trying to write a landing page. (I've anonymised these examples, but the underlying pattern — doubt and uncertainty visible in raw queries but invisible in keyword reports — is something I've encountered across many industries.)

The tidiness problem

Keyword tools are designed to simplify. They take millions of messy, weird, human searches and aggregate them into neat rows: this keyword, this volume, this competition score.

That's useful for certain things. But it strips out the texture — the hesitation, the confusion, the specific anxieties that people reveal when they type into a search bar.

"Accounting software" as a keyword tells you there's demand. It doesn't tell you:

• That people are terrified of screwing up their taxes
• That they've already tried two other tools and hated both
• That they're not actually sure if they need software or an accountant
• That they're searching at 11pm because something's due tomorrow

All of that shows up in actual search queries, if you look. Search behaviour is shaped by cognitive biases, emotional states, and decision-making frameworks — context that keyword tools flatten into simple metrics (Advanced Web Ranking, 2025).

What the weird searches tell you

How people frame the problem. Are they searching for symptoms or solutions?

"Why is my team always behind" is different from "project management software." Same underlying need. Different place in the thinking.

The symptom searches tell you people haven't decided what kind of solution they need yet. The solution searches tell you they have.

What they're scared of. Doubt is loud in search data.

"Is X actually good"

"X problems Reddit"

"Switched from X to Y why"

"Cancel X subscription"

These aren't high-volume keywords. But they tell you exactly what objections you need to address.

Who you're being compared to. Comparison searches are gold:

"X vs Y"

"Alternatives to X"

"Best X for [specific situation]"

They tell you who's in your competitive set, from the customer's perspective. Sometimes it's not who you'd expect.

The questions that follow. Search behaviour fans out. One query leads to another.

If someone searches "best CRM for small business" and then "how to migrate from spreadsheet to CRM," they're telling you where they're coming from. If they follow up with "CRM implementation cost," they're telling you what they're worried about next. These follow-up queries form predictable patterns of intent — if you know what to look for (Advanced Web Ranking, 2024).

How to find this stuff

Your keyword tool's default view won't show you this. You need to look at raw search terms — the actual queries people typed before clicking.

In Google Ads, it's the Search Terms report (not the Keywords report). In Search Console, it's the Queries tab.

Export a few months of data. Sort by impressions or clicks if you want, but don't stop there. Read through the weird ones. The long ones. The ones with typos. The ones that make you think "huh, I didn't expect that."

That's where the insight lives. The real value is in the nuance, not the volume (Moz, 2024).

The question to keep asking

Every time you look at search data, ask: "What does this tell me about what this person was actually thinking?"

Keywords tell you what people typed. Actual searches — the full, messy, human queries — tell you what they were trying to figure out.

The second one is more useful. If you're willing to look.