Understanding keyword markets and locations

When it comes to the geographical places, STAT can track keywords in two ways:

  • Location specified — These keywords are tracked within a given city, state, province, ZIP code, postal code, or other location. This returns SERPs that would be seen by a searcher with geo-location services turned on, which is near-ubiquitous. Today, every SERP is localised to some degree.
  • No location — These keywords are tracked within a top-level market, identified only by country and language. This returns SERPs that would be seen by a searcher who is not using geo-location services, which is extremely rare.

No-location keywords may offer broad and cost-effective coverage; however, they tend to hide the localised results that most searchers see. Note that both no-location and location-specified keywords can also be geo-modified. This is when location terms are included in the search query itself. (For example, [custom cabinets Texas] or [Melbourne raw dog food].) These can be especially insightful for products and services that are closely tied to brick-and-mortar locations.

Market codes are made up of a two-letter country abbreviation followed by a two-letter language abbreviation. When you add keywords manually, you can easily select the market code from the pre-populated drop-down menu. If you are importing data, you can select markets from this list to include in your spreadsheet.

STAT adds support for new markets all of the time at the request of our clients. If you would like to track in a market that is not currently supported, please let us know at support@getstat.com.

There are many valid ways to specify a local market. You should be careful to provide enough detail for search engines to differentiate between common and similar place names within the given market. When adding keywords manually, STAT will autocomplete the location box with the list of locations that already exist on your site.

As a general rule, if your location terms are understood properly in a manual search on the appropriate country-specific search engine, they will also work in STAT.

  • City
  • Including towns and villages. Major neighbourhoods and boroughs may also be accepted.
  • State or province
  • Including other subnational administrative regions such as territories, regions, prefectures, and (in some cases) counties. If the nation uses standard abbreviations for states or provinces, you should be able to use them in place of the full name.
  • Postal code or ZIP code
  • In most cases, you can also use a country’s standardized postal addressing system to specify a narrow location.
  • Combinations
  • Combinations of the above are possible, and are highly recommended to reduce ambiguity for city names that are common in the given market. Although not always necessary, we suggest using a comma to separate combinations (e.g. Vancouver, BC).

In addition to your ranking data, STAT provides global and national search volumes for each of your tracked keywords. (Search volumes below the national level are not provided at this time.)

TRACKING LEVEL SEARCH VOLUMES RANKINGS
Market (i.e. nation plus language only) Global & national National
Sub-national (e.g. state, province, county, prefecture) Global & national Sub-national
Local (e.g. city, town, postal code) Global & national Local
NOTE: Keep in mind that Google uses the term “regional” to refer to both national and local search volume numbers.
NOTE: Google rounds search volume values as follows: values under 1,000 are rounded to the nearest 10, values between 1,000 and 100,000 are rounded to the nearest 100, values between 100,000 and 1,000,000 are rounded to the nearest 1,000, values above 1,000,000 are rounded to the nearest 10,000.
Related article: Site tabs overview
Related resource: STAT market codes