Keyword research in Semrush turns into a copy-paste loop fast. You spot a keyword worth checking, copy it, switch tabs, paste it into Google, read the results, switch back, repeat. Five hundred keywords later you have thirty tabs open and no memory of why half of them are there.
This Semrush userscript removes that loop. It adds one-click buttons for Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Brave beside every row in the Keyword Magic Tool. Hover a row, click an engine, and the search opens in a new tab. No copying, no pasting, no tab-juggling.
What this Semrush userscript does
A userscript is a small piece of JavaScript that runs on a website you already use, changing how that site behaves in your browser. It is not a Semrush feature and it does not touch your Semrush account or data. It only changes what you see on screen, on your machine.
Once installed, this one watches the Keyword Magic Tool and injects a row of search buttons into every keyword line. The buttons stay hidden until you hover, so your list looks exactly as it did before. Tooltips name each engine. A short toast notification confirms when a search has launched, so you know the click registered without staring at your tab bar.
Why five engines and not just Google
Google takes the majority of searches, so that button gets the most use. The other four earn their place for different reasons.
Bing runs its own index and its own ranking logic, and it feeds results into other surfaces, so a keyword that looks crowded on Google is sometimes wide open there. DuckDuckGo matters when your audience skews privacy-conscious, and its result layout differs enough to be worth a look. Brave Search maintains an independent index rather than reselling someone else's, which makes it a genuine second opinion. Yahoo rounds out the set for anyone checking legacy traffic sources.
Running one keyword across all five takes about four seconds with the buttons in place. Doing the same by hand takes long enough that most people skip it, which is exactly why the picture they end up with is narrower than it should be.
Why tab-switching costs more than it looks
A keyword list is only half the job. The other half is judgement.
You want to see what is already ranking. You want to know whether the SERP — the search engine results page — is locked up by large brands or whether a smaller site has room. You want to spot featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, local packs and shopping ads. None of that shows up in a volume column or a difficulty score. You have to look.
Every manual search breaks that looking into pieces. You lose your place in the list, you lose the thread of what you were comparing, and you accumulate tabs you can no longer account for. On its own it is a two-second friction. Across a few hundred rows it turns an afternoon of analysis into an afternoon of clerical work.
Keeping the search inside the Semrush interface keeps your attention inside the research session. That is the whole point of the script, and it is a bigger difference in practice than the size of the change suggests.
How the script works under the hood
Two technical decisions make it reliable rather than flaky. Both are worth understanding, because they explain why it keeps working when simpler scripts stop.
Watching for rows that arrive later
Semrush does not put every keyword on the page at once. Rows are added as you scroll and as you page through results. A script that runs once when the page loads would decorate the first batch of rows and miss everything after that.
This one uses a MutationObserver instead — a browser feature that watches a page for changes and fires whenever new content is inserted. You can read the full behaviour in MDN's MutationObserver reference. Every time Semrush injects a fresh keyword row, the observer notices and the buttons are attached to it immediately. There is nothing to refresh and no manual step.
Running at document-idle
The script is set to run at document-idle, meaning it waits until the page has finished loading before it does anything. Chrome's content script documentation covers the timing options in detail. Waiting keeps the script from competing with Semrush's own scripts during load, so the tool starts up at normal speed and the buttons appear once everything has settled.
Installing it in the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool
The four steps
- Install the Tampermonkey extension in Chrome, Firefox or Edge. Tampermonkey is the manager that runs userscripts for you.
- Open the Semrush search buttons userscript. Tampermonkey will show an install prompt listing the script name and the domains it runs on.
- Confirm the install, then open the Keyword Magic Tool.
- Hover any keyword row. The buttons appear.
It works on semrush.com and on the mirrored tool URLs. There is no configuration file and nothing to edit.
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Is installing a userscript safe
A fair question, and the honest answer is that it depends entirely on the script. A userscript can read and modify any page it is permitted to run on, so the permission line in the install prompt matters. Read it before you accept.
This one is scoped to Semrush domains only, so it cannot see your email, your bank or anything else. It sends nothing anywhere — every button is a plain link that opens a search URL in a new tab. The source is short enough to read end to end before installing, which is what I would suggest doing with any userscript, including this one. Scripts published through Greasy Fork are visible in full for the same reason.
Opening searches this way is ordinary browser use, but each search engine has its own terms of service, and any automated querying at volume falls under those terms. That call is yours to make.
When it breaks, and what to do
Userscripts that modify a SaaS interface break eventually. Semrush ships changes to its front end, class names shift, and a script that hooks onto the old structure stops finding anything to hook onto. This is normal and not a sign the script was badly built.
The symptom is specific: the tool loads fine, but hovering a row produces no buttons. If that happens, check that Tampermonkey is enabled and that the script is switched on for the tab, then reload once. If it is still silent, the selectors need updating and I will push a new version.
Send me the URL you were on and the browser you were using. That is usually enough to find the change without any back and forth.
Where a userscript ends and a custom build starts
This script solves one annoyance on one tool. That is its entire scope, and it is free.
The pattern behind it is not limited to Semrush. Any site where you repeat the same click sequence dozens of times a day can be handled the same way, whether through a userscript, a Chrome extension, a no-code macro, or a Python and Playwright bot that runs on a schedule and drops results into a spreadsheet or database. Which one fits depends on whether you need it in front of you while you work or running quietly overnight, and on how much data comes out the other end.
That is the browser automation work I take on, sold through Fiverr. If you have a tool that eats your afternoons and no script exists for it, tell me what the workflow looks like — the specific clicks, the site, and what you want at the end — and I will tell you which approach fits and what it takes to build. You can also read how I work and what I build, or browse my other write-ups on scraping and automation.
Once the buttons are there, going back to copy and paste is hard.