Enhancing Keywords People Use: New Watch Feature, Query Performance Visualization, and Similarity Scores

I’ve been itching to share some exciting updates we’ve made to our Search Console integration feature over at Keywords People Use. You might’ve heard me mention this tool in some of my podcasts, and honestly, it’s been a bit of a game-changer for us and, hopefully, for many of you as well.

When we first rolled out the integration, it was, admittedly, a bit basic. It was our first iteration, and we had grand plans for where we wanted to take it. As we’ve been using it ourselves to boost the visibility of our own sites—including Keywords People Use—we’ve been noticing areas where we could tweak and improve things. Plus, we’ve had some great feedback from some of you who’ve been giving it a trial. So, we’ve taken all that on board and rolled out some new features over the past couple of weeks.

I thought it’d be worth diving into some of these new additions and explaining how they might help you out.

The Watch Feature

First up, we’ve introduced a Watch feature. Now, if you’re anything like me, when you’re sifting through heaps of data, it can get a tad overwhelming. For instance, I’m looking at one of our pages right now that’s got 6,735 queries. Just for one page! Clearly, we’re not going to optimise for every single one of those queries. It’s all about picking and choosing based on relevance, traffic levels, impression counts, and current query positions.

This Watch feature lets you flag individual queries or pages that you want to keep an eye on. Maybe there’s a query that’s hovering just outside of page one, or a page that’s performing well but has the potential to do even better. By ‘watching’ them, you can filter out the noise and focus on the stuff that really matters. There’s a little heart icon next to each row—just click it to watch or unwatch a query or page. It’s simple but makes a world of difference when you’re trying to hone in on your targets.

Visualising Query Performance Over Time

The second big addition is the ability to visualise how different queries are performing for a page over time. In the backend, once you’ve connected your site to Keywords People Use, we’re automatically tracking loads of data points. Initially, we didn’t have much in the way of visualisations, but we knew that had to change.

Now, next to each query for a page, there’s a little graph icon. Click on that, and you’ll see a graph showing your average position on Google’s search results over time. This data comes straight from Search Console. It’s a handy way to see how any changes you’ve made are impacting your rankings. If you’ve updated your content to better address a particular query, you can see whether that’s led to an improvement in your position.

We’re also working on expanding this feature so you can see performance at the page level and even the site level. The goal is to give you a clear picture of how your efforts are paying off, so you can make informed decisions moving forward.

Introducing Similarity Scores Using Embeddings

Now, this one’s a bit technical, but bear with me. We’ve started using something called embeddings to generate a similarity score for every query and page combination. Essentially, embeddings are a way of understanding the overall meaning and context of your web page and potential search queries. They allow us to compare the two and give you a score that tells you how closely your content aligns with what users are searching for.

The scores range from zero to one, with higher numbers indicating a better match. It’s rare to get a perfect one, but the idea is to aim for as high a score as possible. This helps you see where your content is hitting the mark and where it might need a bit of tweaking.

What’s really exciting about this is that it’s quite different from other content optimisation tools out there. Tools like Surfer SEO tend to focus on things like the number of words on a page, the number of headings, and so on, based on analysing the top-ranking pages. But search engines and large language models these days are using more sophisticated methods, like embeddings, to understand and rank content.

By using embeddings, we’re moving beyond just copying what’s already out there. Instead, we’re focusing on genuine relevance and intent. It helps you identify unique opportunities where your content could satisfy a search in ways that existing content doesn’t. This aligns with concepts like information gain—providing new, valuable information rather than just rehashing what’s already available.

As you update your content, we re-crawl your pages and update the embeddings, so you can see in real-time how your changes are affecting the similarity scores. It’s an ongoing process that helps you optimise and re-optimise your content continually.

The Bigger Picture

All of this ties into our broader vision for Keywords People Use. We’re not just a keyword research tool—though that’s where we started. Our aim is to provide an end-to-end solution that takes you from finding the right keywords all the way through to optimising and monitoring your content.

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years is that people often focus on churning out new content, which is great, but they sometimes overlook the goldmine they already have. Optimising existing content can be one of the easiest ways to get more traffic. Once Google trusts a page, expanding and improving that page can bring in new audiences and boost your rankings more effectively than starting from scratch every time.

This flywheel effect of continuous improvement is what we’re trying to foster. By providing tools that help you understand where to focus your efforts, we hope to make the whole process more efficient and, frankly, more enjoyable.

We’re getting closer and closer to realising this vision, and it’s been fantastic to see so many people already benefiting from these tools. There’s still so much more we want to do, and I genuinely believe we’re onto something that can make a significant difference for a lot of folks out there.

So, that’s where we’re at right now. I’m really excited about these new features, and I can’t wait to hear how they help you in optimising your own sites.