Frequently Asked Questions

What is Site Topic?

Site Topic is a new platform that uses AI to analyze and extract meaningful insights from your website's search query data. By turning keywords into entities called labels and grouping them into label groups, Site Topic identifies your core topics and trends relevant to your site, known as your site topic.

What are label groups and labels?

Labels are words or phrases that categorize or describe entities within your site. Label groups are categories of these labels that relate to your site's theme. For example, an eCommerce fashion site might have label groups like brand or colour, whereas a used car website could have make or model as label groups.
But these are just examples: every site has different label groups and labels. Labels are often the vocabulary used internally to talk about the business itself.

Why is it valuable to translate customer searches into the business's language?

Translating customer search terms into the business's language helps connect what customers are looking for with what your business offers. This process makes it easier for different parts of the company, like marketing or product development, to understand customer needs quickly and accurately.

By using terms that are familiar within the business, teams can collaborate more effectively and make data-driven decisions, leading to better products and services.
Essentially, it bridges the gap between what customers want and business actions, letting you respond more quickly to market trends.

What are the challenges of extracting named entities from search query data?

Extracting named entities from search query data is tough. Queries are short and ambiguous and often have informal language, misspellings, and lack of context. That brevity means queries often lack the grammatical structure of longer text, making it difficult to identify entities accurately.

Additionally, queries may contain abbreviations, slang, or non-standard terms, which are hard to interpret correctly. The varying contexts in which a term can be used also add complexity, as the same word might represent different entities depending on the query.

What is the purpose of normalizing search query data?

Search queries are often noisy, rife with misspellings or inconsistent formatting. Site Topic cleans and standardizes this data, ensuring that the labels generated are accurate and meaningful, reflecting genuine user interests and behaviors.

What is implicit demand?

It's very common for people to miss out clarifying words when searching, because much of human language is implicit. For instance, a user searching for v40 is implicitly looking for something of category: car and make: volvo. Site Topic analyzes search behavior to uncover implicit demand, identifying the search intent that isn't explicitly stated in the keywords. Site Topic can interpret implicit demand within search queries, identifying relevant labels even when they're not explicitly mentioned.

Similarly, a search query like 95s means the searcher wanted Nike Air Max sneakers, even though they didn't explicitly use those words. Site Topic understands that and uses this query's data to contribute to the brand: Nike, product_line: Air Max and category: sneaker (as well as the 95 model).

Is Site Topic free?

Site Topic is currently in beta. You can use it for free for up to 1,000 keywords. After that, there are paid plans available.

When you sign up and verify your email, you'll get 1,000 credits, which you can use to run Site Topic on up to 1,000 keywords.

How does Site Topic use my data?

We process your Google Search Console (GSC) data through various large language models (LLMs) and software. We also store your GSC data over time. The collective data from all users is utilized to enhance our models, benefiting every user by providing more accurate and comprehensive analyses.

If you would like us to stop using Site Topic, you can disconnect your data and we will stop processing it.

To sign up for Site Topic, visit our Sign In Page and click on "Sign Up Here." Enter your email, agree to the terms and conditions, and verify your email to access Site Topic.

Note: you'll get credits for a free report to use up to 1,000 keywords.

How does Site Topic handle abbreviations and acronyms in keywords?

Site Topic recognizes and interprets search query abbreviations within keywords, understanding their context to accurately categorize them. For example, nyc is recognized as 'New York City,', awd as 'all-wheel drive' and jpg as 'Jean Paul Gaultier' (at least in the context of jpg le male elixir 125 ml).

Can Site Topic identify synonyms in search queries?

Yes, Site Topic identifies keyword synonyms in search queries, recognizing different terms with similar meanings to ensure accurate categorization. It's common (especially in GSC data) to find a lot of misspellings. Site Topic cleans that up automatically without you needing to lift a finger.

What are taxonomies in Site Topic?

Keyword taxonomies in Site Topic refer to the hierarchical classification of data. Site Topic:

categorizes products into a taxonomy of type, category, and sub_category
brands into brand, product_line and model (and sometimes trim).
vehicles into automotive makes, models and trims

This structure helps you to filter to find the right keywords and labels. For instance, you might want to find only the brands that appear for type: electronics, or only find the product_lines associated with brand: trek bikes.

Note that sometimes a brand has a model as a child and skips product_lines altogether. Some product_lines don't have any models as children. Generally, the type/category/sub-category taxonomy is stricter.

How is this different from other methods of topic clustering?

Often when clustering keywords into topics you end up with a lot of topics -- perhaps hundreds! Then you need to manually work out how they each relate to one another. It ends up being a hugely labourious and time-consuming process. Site Topic clusters keywords into topics in a different way, so that you can quickly see topics that can be categorized similarly. For instance, if a site has lots of recipes, Site Topic might show how to group these by ingredient, since that's an intuitive way that many people will search for a recipe. Automating keyword research like this delivers information you can share with a customer without any additional manual work.

How does Site Topic generate reports from Google Search Console data?

Site Topic allows you to generate reports by connecting to your Google Search Console account, selecting the desired property, and choosing the market to analyze. It works out what people mean when they search and find your site. We categorise keyword interpretations. This process provides insights into your website's performance.

What is the 'Keywords' view in Site Topic?

Site Topic labels your keywords. The "Keywords" view shows a table:

Down the left-hand side you'll see your keywords and associated metrics, which include search volume (which we look up using SEMrush's API), impressions & clicks for a GSC report, or competitive traffic for a report from uploaded keywords.
Across the top you'll see the top 25 label groups.
In each of the cells you'll see the different labels in a label group with which that keyword has been labelled.

What is the 'Top labels' view in Site Topic?

Labels are ways to categorise your keywords and the 'Top labels view' in Site Topic provides an overview of the how users search to find the most searched for labels in your keywords. This helps you understand how users intuitively think when they search and find your site.

The top labels are shown by label group, which you can choose from a dropdown.

The "Top labels" view can optionally be seen with the keywords per label ("Top labels & keywords") or with the pages that rank for a label ("Top labels & pages").

Your top labels can be used to understand whether you miss facets or filters on your side. For instance, t's common that users will search for quite specific colors like nardo grey (for Audi cars) or navy blue, rather than the primary colors a site might typically use for filtering. Site Topic lets you work out how users intuitively think and search. It can make sense to add these as filters.

What is the 'Top topics' view in Site Topic?

Site Topic labels your keywords. We call sets of labels a 'topic'. The 'Top topics' view shows the top topics by search volume.

In addition, the 'Top topics' view can optionally be seen with the keywords per topic ("Top topics & keywords") or with the pages that rank for a topic ("Top topics & pages").

What is the 'Top grammars' view in Site Topic?

We call combinations of label groups a 'grammar'. Grammars represent common ways of searching and common page types. For instance, brand + category is a common popular grammar, which covers things like ninja air fryer, nike sneakers or blackrock etf (although for each site, it's likely that a grammar will be more specific). Grammars are useful to understand from what type of queries your competitors get the lion's share of their traffic. If you don't have a page type matching that, it might be worth adding one. They can also be used to filter topics to focus in on a certain kind of search.

The 'top grammars' view shows the top grammars by search volume. You can click on the label groups to build up a grammar, then choose the labels from each label group dropdown. Saving will add your grammar to a dropdown which can be used to filter any 'Top topics' view.

How does Site Topic handle label variations in keywords?

Site Topic identifies variations in keywords, such as different keyword spelling or abbreviations, and normalizes them to ensure accurate labeling and categorization.

What are 'labels' and 'label groups' in Site Topic?

Labels are ways to categorise your keywords and label groups categorize labels. Label groups in turn categorize labels. Label groups are collections of related labels that categorize keywords into broader themes. For instance, red, blue and emerald green are all labels from the label group color.

Can Site Topic analyze data from SEMrush?

Yes, Site Topic can automate SEMrush keyword research: you can take a SEMrush keyword export, invest a few minutes of your time and get keyword research that's ready to share with clients.

How does Site Topic assist in keyword clustering?

Site Topic groups related keywords into clusters using labels & label groups, helping you understand and organize search queries.

How does Site Topic handle large datasets?

Site Topic is designed to process and analyze large sets of keywords efficiently, providing actionable insights even for extensive keyword lists. You can handle querying 100-100,000 easily. If you'd like to run Site Topic on much larger sets of keywords, please just ask -- you can reach us at hello@similar.ai.

Can Site Topic provide recommendations for new content?

Yes, Site Topic analyzes search data to identify gaps and opportunities, to find pages that your site misses. There are a few different ways to use Site Topic to do content gap analysis. One of the simplest for an e-commerce site is to add a product page filter to identify which pages are product pages. The "Missing Pages" report will show topics for which only three or more product pages rank.

How frequently is my Site Topic report updated?

By default, we don't update your Site Topic report, so it is possible it will grow stale over time. You can re-run a report as often as you'd like. Often you'll see that there are new keywords, labels and topics, as well as big shifts in search volume. Good to know you can easily update incorporate the latest data and trends, ensuring that your insights are current and relevant!

Does Site Topic offer customer support?

Yes, Site Topic provides customer support to assist with any questions or issues you may encounter. You can reach out to us at hello@similar.ai.