How Do I Use Cerebro to Research Keywords on Walmart?

Helium 10 offers Walmart sellers the ability to conduct competitor keyword research on Walmart with its popular Reverse Product research tool, Cerebro. Cerebro for Walmart is currently in Beta mode. Helium 10 is devoting significant resources to expand and enhance its software for the Walmart seller, but during this Beta testing period, users are encouraged to include the accompanying Amazon data as a valuable comparison to the new Walmart data in their analysis.

This article is divided into four sections: 1) Accessing Cerebro for Walmart, 2) Researching a Single Product in Cerebro, 3) Researching Multiple Products in Cerebro, and 4) Additional Cerebro Functionality and Features.

I. Accessing Cerebro for Walmart

1. Log into Helium 10 and open Cerebro from the Helium 10 Dashboard, using the Tools software selector in the top toolbar. Cerebro is located under Keyword Research.

2. On the Cerebro dashboard, choose the marketplace in which you want to begin your research. The walmart.com marketplace is located at the bottom of the list.

 

II. Researching a Single Product in Cerebro

3. You can search for a single product or multiple products simultaneously. To begin a single product search, you will need to have a seed product’s Walmart Product ID. Go to walmart.com, search for a product, click on the product listing page, and copy the Product ID from the URL string. 

You can also find the Product ID by running Helium 10’s product research tool, Xray, and copying it from there into the search results. Xray is part of the Helium 10 Chrome Extension. If you don’t have the latest version of the Helium 10 Chrome Extension, you can read how to install it in the article, “How Do I Install and Navigate the Helium 10 Chrome Extension?” To see the Product ID in Xray, click on the Xray button while on a search results or product page.

Inside the Xray window, look for the Product ID column to find the number.

4. Copy and Paste the Product ID into the Cerebro search field, and click the Get Keywords button.

5. At the top of the search results page, Cerebro displays four boxes of top level data:

• The Products box shows the product title, its main image and its Product ID. When you conduct a single product search, this first box is static, but when you conduct a multi-product search, you can cycle through the products like a slideshow. Click on the side arrow to shuffle forward or backward to view each searched product’s title, image and Product ID.
• The Distribution box breaks down the match type of the discovered keywords, identifying how many Walmart designates as Organic and how many it designates as Sponsored.
• The Related Products box shows products that appear on the listing page as promoted by Walmart. They may be Also Boughts, Sponsored Products or Also Considered, depending on which data Walmart chooses to display on the listing at the time of the search. 
• The Word Frequency box lists the individual words that appear in the keywords, and identifies how many times each word appears as part of a phrase in the search results.

6. Below the top level data boxes, Cerebro offers a range of filters that you can use to narrow and focus your keyword research.

7. The first filter allows you to exclude keywords based on the popularity of their search volume.

8. Helium 10 has extensive data on Amazon search volume. Even though you are searching for keywords for Walmart, because the data is so new, you may also want to use the Amazon data as a way of focusing your Walmart keyword results.

9. Organic Rank, Sponsored Rank, Competing Products and Word Count are dependent on the data discovered on Walmart. Some caveats: Keep in mind that when a product on Walmart has a sponsored ad running, it generally doesn’t show up in keywords ranking organically. Also, Helium 10 has determined that shoppers on Amazon who search long-tailed keywords have greater buyer intent, but that is not necessarily true for Walmart shoppers.

10. To see the Advanced Filters, click on the gray Advanced Filters bar. From this section you can filter keyword results based on their Match Type. The default search shows both types. Check the boxes in the drop-down menu to limit for one or the other.

Understanding the data for Organic Rank and Sponsored Rank requires some special considerations when you are conducting research on Walmart, especially for sellers who are familiar with Amazon’s ranking system on its search results pages. 

On Amazon, a product with a sponsored ad running may rank in the top of the search results for a keyword twice, once for its sponsored rank and once for its organic rank. 

Conversely, on Walmart, if a product appears at the top of the search results for a keyword while it is part of a running sponsored ad campaign, the platform generally does not also display its organic rank. Walmart doesn’t appear to want duplication of a product in the search results. 

To address this issue, and if the data is available, Helium 10 retains the product’s most recent organic rank in its data column so that sellers can see where a product would likely rank when it is not featured in a sponsored ad.

11. Under Advanced Filters, you can also direct Cerebro to include or exclude specific phrases, like the names of branded products. 

And finally, on a single product search, you can filter for products Walmart has tagged as a Best Seller. If you check Analyzed Product, Cerebro will only show keyword results in which the single or Seed product is tagged with a Best Seller badge. If you check Other Product, Cerebro will only show keyword results in which a competing product is tagged with a promotional badge.

12. Additionally, if at any time, you are uncertain about what a filter means, you can hover your cursor over the tooltips (circles with question marks) to see a pop-up explanation to guide your use.

13. In the Filtered Keyword section, Cerebro breaks down the relevant keyword data into columns for easy comparison. The first column shows the keyword or phrase Rank as it appears in the Walmart results. Cerebro defaults to load the results by rank, but you can sort the data using the Sort by Drop-down menu in the top left of the section. 

The second column allows you to delete a keyword phrase from the list by clicking the X. The third column allows you to bulk select all the keywords for an action. Right now, that action is limited to adding them simultaneously to your My List (see section IV of this article to learn about adding keywords to My List, or check out the Pro Training video about My List.)

14. The fourth column lists the keyword phrases associated with the single product searched, and includes links back to walmart.com where you can see all the products ranking for the individual keywords.

15. The fifth column, which will be of the greatest interest to sellers in their research, contains the Walmart Search Volume estimates for each keyword. The data is so new that it’s currently being presented on a scale from Very Low to Very High.

16. To help sellers draw comparisons to Helium 10’s mature data from Amazon, Cerebro includes a second Search Volume column, reporting the corresponding estimated search volume for Amazon. Again, sellers are cautioned to use the data presented with the understanding that shoppers on the two retail platforms may engage in different types of shopping search practices. Nonetheless, it is worthwhile to see the two sets of data alongside each other, and to use the mature Amazon data to make predictions about the potential of individual keywords in your marketing, listings and PPC on Walmart.

17. The remaining columns’ data is all drawn directly from Walmart. The Competing Products, Sponsored Products, Match Type, Organic Rank and Sponsored Rank come directly from Walmart.

 

III. Researching Multiple Products in Cerebro

Cerebro allows you to research more than one product at a time. You can simply copy and paste up to ten product IDs into the search field and click the Get Keywords button, or you can enter a single Product ID and click Get competitors to let Cerebro find products that are competing for sales with the same keywords as the single product. 

The first Product ID in the search field, whether you enter it by itself, or with other Product IDs, becomes the Seed Product. All the comparative data appearing in Cerebro’s results will now be based on the remaining competitor products in the search field.

18. To access the competitor products generated by Cerebro, click the Get Competitors button.

19. A window will appear with competing products. If you want to see the product’s listing on Walmart, click the boxed arrow icon next to the Product ID.

The link will open the listing page on Walmart.

20. To add a product to the current Cerebro research, click on the product box. The frame on the box will light up, showing it has been selected. Once you have selected the products you want to include in your research, click the OK button.

21. The products you select from the Competitors window are now entered into the search field as competing products for your Seed product. Click the blue Get Keywords button to update the search results.

22. Immediately, you’ll see a set of new filters and columns appearing in the search results that reflect the impact of additional searched Product IDs and their relationship to each other.

• The Position Rank filter allows you to choose where the Seed product appears organically. In the single product search, this filter was labeled as Organic Rank.
• The Competitor Performance Score reports only on the secondary, competing products entered (excluding the seed product). The purpose of this score is to help you discover potential markets in which the competitors appear to be less successful or less established. The score has a potential of 10 points, with one being a low score, and ten being a high score. Cerebro identifies how many of the competing products are ranking for the keyword. Then, for keywords in which most of the competing products rank for the keyword, but together, have a low average rank, the Competitor Performance Score is high. If the competing products rank for a keyword, and together share a high average rank, then the score will be high, because it means that the market for this type of product is highly competitive. 
• The Relative Rank filter identifies how the Seed, or first, product ranks compared to the competing products.
• The Sponsored Rank (avg) filter averages all of the ranks of any sponsored products in the search.
• The Sponsored Rank (count) filter identifies how many of the searched products are ranked as Sponsored Ad products.
• The Competitor Rank Average filter identifies which of the searched competing products (excluding the Seed product) rank for the listed keyword, then Cerebro averages their rank. It ignores any competing products in the search that do not rank for the keyword.
• The Ranking Competitors filter, much like the Sponsored Rank (count) filter, simply identifies how many of the searched products (excluding the Seed product) rank for the listed keyword.
• Finally, the Advanced Rank filter allows you to set the minimum and maximum number of competitor products (excluding the Seed product) ranking for a keyword, and which are ranking inside a specific range. This filter requires you to set two types of parameters to refine your search: the number of products, and where they currently rank in the search results. For example, you could set the first two fields for “1” and “2”, and the maximum of the second set of fields at “50,” to filter for keywords in which at least one of the searched competitor products (excluding the Seed product), and at most two of the competitor products, rank organically somewhere in the top 50 positions.

23. The new filters are reflected in the added columns under Filtered keywords. As noted above, the Position Rank shows the Seed product’s organic rank. 

 

IV. Additional Cerebro Functionality and Features

24. You can save keywords in My List.  Click the + Add Keyword to My List button and select Create New Folder.

25. Type a relevant folder name into the open field in the pop-up window and click the blue Save button.

26. Now that you’ve created a folder in which to store your keywords, you can add keywords to it from Cerebro, or from any Helium 10 tool that has the + Add Keywords to My List button. Next, to add the keywords from the current research list, check the box next to each keyword you wish to save, or if you want to save all of the keywords, check the Select All checkbox at the top of the column. Once you’ve selected your keywords to save, click the +Add Keywords to My List again.

27. Find your new folder, or select an existing folder. Click the name. Cerebro will store the keywords in your My List folder.

28. To check your folder, or to access the folder later, choose My List - Keywords from the Tools Menu. The link is located under the Keyword Research heading.

29. When you click on My List - Keywords, you’ll see all your folders of all the keywords you’ve saved in the past.

For more information about My List, see the Pro Training Video on My List.

30. Another feature in Cerebro for Walmart is the Amazon Search Volume History Graph, which can be opened by clicking on the search volume history icon next to the search volume in the Amazon search volume column. You can view a keyword’s search volume history for the past 30 days, the past 90 days, the past year, and for all time, which dates back to when the keyword was first identified.

To learn more about the Search Volume History, check out the article, “How Do I See the Search Volume History in Cerebro and Magnet?” or watch the video, “Search Volume and Its Importance.” 

31. Additional filters and means of saving your data appear in the top right corner of the dashboard next to the Learn button (where you can access additional video training on Cerebro) and the marketplace selector drop-down menu. 

32. The first button highlighted above, History, opens your historical search history. Every time you search a product, Cerebro stores the data for you. This action allows you to stop and return to your research, and it allows you to manage your number of searches, so that you do not waste time searching for the same products over and over in a short timeframe. 

After an initial search, if you want to continue your research on a specific product or set of products, open the History menu, and click the Open button for the research event you want to resume. 

If at any time you decide you don’t need to keep a specific search, simply open this window, and click the Delete button next to the search results you want to remove. Once you delete a set of search results, you will not be able to see them again. 

33. If your History folder is getting too large to manage, and/or you want to save your results offline, you can also download search results using the Export button.

34. The Common Words filter, unlike the primary filters in the program, is designed to work universally on all your searches, not just for a specific event. To remove a word from all the searches you conduct, add it to the Common Words window.

Helium 10 already populates the Common Words folder with words like articles (a, an, and the), prepositions (into, after, over, under, etc.) and conjunctions (and, either, or, etc.) but you may have specific words you always want eliminated from all of your searches. If so, this is the section where you can manage that list. For example, you may sell in a specific product market with a major brand competitor. You can enter the brand name here so that it never shows up in your searches.

Click the Common Words button to open the pop-up Common Words window. Type in the word(s) you want removed from search results. You can also set the program to remove Special Characters by clicking the box in the bottom left corner of the pop-up window.

To view and/or delete words you previously added to the Common Words library, from inside the Common Words pop-up window, go to the Delete All Common Words tab and click on the red Delete button next to the keyword you want removed.

35. The last button in the top right corner is the Deleted Words library button. Every time you X, or manually delete, a keyword from the current search results, Cerebro stores it in the Deleted Words folder. If you want to see which keywords you’ve deleted, or you want to restore the words to the results list, click on the Deleted Words button.

Inside the Deleted words window, find the keyword(s) you want to restore to the search results, and click on the corresponding gold Return to Result button.

While Cerebro for Walmart status is in Beta mode, we encourage you to contribute feedback by filling out the Share Your Ideas form, located under the Circled Question Mark icon on the main Helium 10 toolbar at the top of the window.