How our reports are made
Code calculates every number. AI only explains what the numbers mean, and every report is checked against its data before it is sent.
Where the data comes from
- Keyword and competitor data (search volume, keyword difficulty, search intent, rankings, estimated traffic, backlinks) comes from a licensed SEO data provider through its paid API.
- We do not scrape Google or any other search engine.
- Data is pulled when you order. If the same query was pulled in the last 30 days we reuse it, and every report shows the date its data was pulled.
Why our numbers differ from Semrush and Ahrefs
Search volume and traffic are estimates. Every SEO tool builds its own estimates from its own data, so no two tools agree, and none of them matches Google’s own figures exactly. Use our numbers to compare keywords and domains with each other and to spot trends, not as exact counts. Every report says this on its first page.
What code calculates
- Opportunity score (0–100) for each keyword = 100 × volume score × ease × intent weight, where volume score = log10(volume + 1) ÷ log10(largest volume in the report + 1), ease = (100 − difficulty) ÷ 100, and intent weight is 1.0 for transactional, 0.9 for commercial, 0.6 for informational and 0.2 for navigational searches (people looking for a specific brand).
- Keyword difficulty (0–100) is how hard it is to reach the first page of Google; 70 or more is marked “too hard for now”.
- Spelling variants that differ only by word order, hyphens, plurals or small words are merged into the most-searched spelling, and their volume is counted once, so totals are not inflated.
- Quick wins are keywords in the easiest third of the report (difficulty 40 at most) with at least the report’s median volume, at most 10 per report and 3 per topic group.
- Competitor figures: estimated monthly traffic, ranked keywords by position band, the share of traffic from each top page, the share from branded searches, and keyword gaps against your site.
- Every chart is drawn by code straight from the data.
How AI is used
An AI model (Anthropic’s Claude) groups keywords into topics and writes the summary, notes and recommendations. It never writes a number itself: it refers to figures by name, and code fills in the real values. AI answers are not used for any calculation.
The quality check
Before a report is sent, an automatic check confirms that:
- every number in the text comes from the calculated data;
- every keyword and URL it mentions is in the report’s data;
- traffic and volume are called estimates, and nothing promises rankings or visitors.
A report that fails is rewritten once. If it fails again it is not sent, and your credit comes back automatically.
Questions
Email support@searchdossier.com or see sample reports.