Rank Tracking Difficulty

No. It scores difficulty purely from how many words are in your keyword phrase — a 1-word keyword is scored 'Hard,' 2-3 words progressively easier, 4+ words 'Easy.' It doesn't look at actual search volume, current SERP competition, or the backlink profiles of pages currently ranking.

It's a legitimate general pattern in SEO — shorter, broader keywords ('shoes') tend to be far more competitive than longer, more specific phrases ('best waterproof hiking shoes for wide feet') — but it's a rule of thumb, not a measurement of your specific keyword's real competition.

Ahrefs' Keyword Difficulty tool, Semrush's Keyword Difficulty, or Moz's Keyword Explorer all analyze the actual backlink strength of currently-ranking pages to produce a real, comparable difficulty score.

Use it only as a quick sanity check on short-tail vs. long-tail strategy — for an actual go/no-go decision on a specific keyword, check a real keyword-difficulty tool first.