Keyword research
Keyword research is the work of finding out which words and questions people actually use when they look for what a business sells, so its pages can be written to answer them rather than to describe the business in its own vocabulary.
Where the questions come from
The most reliable source a small business has is the telephone: the five or six things a caller asks before booking. Those questions, written as headings with real answers beneath them, are what an assistant can lift. This site builds its measurement panel the same way, from the buyer questions for one trade in one place, twelve per business, put to one assistant, Claude with live web search, and asked again once the fixes are live and every month with monitoring; the methodology page describes it. The audit behind that panel found how rarely those questions appear on the sites themselves, in what 9,483 small business websites serve to an AI crawler.
The number that does not exist
Traditional keyword research ranks phrases by monthly search volume, an estimate a tool produces for a search box. No such figure exists for a question put to an assistant, and none appears on this site. What can be measured instead is the outcome: for a fixed set of questions, whether the business is named, where, and in what tone. The research step decides the questions; the measurement step reads the answers.
Research and the vocabulary gap
A business describes itself in the words of its trade. Its customers describe the problem in theirs. Keyword research is the translation between the two, and its output is a list of phrasings to write in, in headings and in the first sentence under them, not a list of words to repeat.
A common question
Why is there no search volume number for a question put to an assistant?
Search volume is an estimate a tool produces for a search box, and nothing equivalent exists for a question typed into an assistant. This site publishes no such figure. What can be counted instead is the result: take a fixed set of buyer questions, put them to the assistants, and record whether the business is named, where, and in what tone. Research picks the questions; measurement reads the answers back.