Keyword Research

Keyword Research MCP is a lightweight local MCP server for retrieving and normalizing Google Ads keyword-planning evidence. It is under active development; the current repository contains the executable project foundation plus the typed, tested research interface and production Google Ads adapter. MCP tool registration described in the implementation plan is still being built.

Paid Competition in Google Ads describes advertiser activity. This project does not present it as organic ranking difficulty and does not calculate a composite keyword score.

Requirements

• Python 3.10 through 3.14
• uv

Google Ads credentials are not needed for tests. They are required when the production adapter connects to Google Ads.

Google Ads configuration

The production adapter uses google-ads==31.2.0 and explicitly selects Google Ads API v25. Configure exactly one target customer and one authentication method. Customer IDs may contain hyphens; they are normalized in memory.

For user OAuth, set:

export GOOGLE_ADS_DEVELOPER_TOKEN="developer-token-placeholder"
export GOOGLE_ADS_CUSTOMER_ID="123-456-7890"
export GOOGLE_ADS_LOGIN_CUSTOMER_ID="987-654-3210" # optional manager account
export GOOGLE_ADS_CLIENT_ID="client-id-placeholder"
export GOOGLE_ADS_CLIENT_SECRET="client-secret-placeholder"
export GOOGLE_ADS_REFRESH_TOKEN="refresh-token-placeholder"

For a service account, omit the three user-OAuth settings and set:

export GOOGLE_ADS_DEVELOPER_TOKEN="developer-token-placeholder"
export GOOGLE_ADS_CUSTOMER_ID="123-456-7890"
export GOOGLE_ADS_JSON_KEY_FILE_PATH="/path/to/service-account.json"
export GOOGLE_ADS_IMPERSONATED_EMAIL="[email protected]" # optional

Alternatively, point GOOGLE_ADS_CONFIGURATION_FILE_PATH at a local google-ads.yaml:

developer_token: developer-token-placeholder
customer_id: "123-456-7890"
login_customer_id: "987-654-3210"
client_id: client-id-placeholder
client_secret: client-secret-placeholder
refresh_token: refresh-token-placeholder

Optional process settings are KEYWORD_RESEARCH_CACHE_CAPACITY (default 128) and KEYWORD_RESEARCH_LOG_LEVEL (default INFO). Credential files, google-ads.yaml, and .env files are ignored by Git.

Set up and run

uv sync
uv run keyword-research-mcp

The command runs over stdio, so it waits silently for an MCP client and writes protocol messages only to standard output.

Development

Run the same quality gate used in CI:

uv run ruff format --check .
uv run ruff check .
uv run pyright
uv run pytest
uv build

See the implementation plan for the intended tool contracts, architecture, delivery phases, and product boundaries.

License

MIT