Google Keyword Planner is the official keyword research tool from Google, accessible through a Google Ads account. You don't need to run ads to use it, though Google shows more precise data to active advertisers. The tool provides monthly search volume ranges, competition metrics (low/medium/high based on advertiser demand), and suggested bid prices in CAD or your local currency. Keyword Planner excels at discovering seed keywords and their variations. Enter a product, service, or URL and it returns hundreds of related terms Google considers relevant. For a Toronto landscaping company, typing "lawn care" might surface "spring lawn aeration," "fertilizer service," and "seasonal cleanup" with their respective volumes. The competition column tells you how many advertisers bid on each term, which loosely correlates with commercial intent. The main limitation is data aggregation. Google often shows ranges like 1K-10K or 10K-100K instead of exact numbers unless you're spending significantly on ads. Search volume is averaged over 12 months, so seasonal spikes get smoothed out. The tool also filters out very low-volume queries and doesn't show metrics for every long-tail variant you might rank for. At Ottawa SEO, we use Keyword Planner as a starting point to validate that core terms have actual search demand, then cross-reference with Google Search Console data from our portfolio to see what real users type. We also check "People also ask" and autocomplete directly in Google, since Keyword Planner misses many question-based and hyper-local queries that drive traffic. Beyond Keyword Planner, Google offers Search Console for keywords you already rank for and Google Trends for comparing interest over time or across regions. Trends is particularly useful for Canadian businesses checking whether a term is stronger in Vancouver versus Halifax. Neither tool replaces Keyword Planner for volume estimates, but together they give a fuller picture than any single Google tool alone.