N-Gram Analyzer

What is your page actually about? Paste the content, choose a phrase length, and the analyzer ranks the most frequent words and phrases — the fastest way to see whether a draft reinforces your topic or drifts into filler.

An n-gram is a run of n consecutive words: a 1-gram is a single word, a 2-gram (bigram) a two-word phrase, a 3-gram (trigram) a three-word phrase. This analyzer counts every n-gram in your text and ranks them by frequency, so the phrases that dominate the page rise to the top. It is a quick content audit: if your top n-grams match the topic you are targeting, the page reinforces it; if filler or off-topic phrases lead, the page reads as unfocused.

The calculator

N-Gram Analyzer inputs and result

How many words per phrase.
Skip phrases bordered by words like the, and, of.
✓ Paste text to analyze
Top phrase frequency
0most frequent
0unique n-grams
Export

Walkthrough

How to use this calculator

  1. Paste your contentDrop in the page copy, draft, or a competitor’s content. The analyzer reads the whole block, so include everything you want counted.
  2. Choose the phrase lengthPick 1 for single words, 2 for two-word phrases, or 3 for three-word phrases. Two-word phrases are usually the most revealing for topic checks.
  3. Decide on stop-word filteringLeave filtering on to skip filler like the and of, so meaningful phrases surface. Turn it off if you want a raw count of everything.
  4. Read the frequency tableThe analysis block ranks the top n-grams with counts and a bar for relative share. The headline shows the single most frequent phrase.
  5. Audit against your topicIf the top phrases match your target, the page reinforces it. If not, revise. Then export the table for your content brief or competitor teardown.

From the desk

RGM Expert Says

Real Growth Matters — Content strategy practiceHow we use this tool with clients

An n-gram table is the first thing we run on a draft we did not write, and often on ones we did. It answers a deceptively hard question in two seconds: what is this page actually about? Writers think they know, but the frequency table is honest. We have opened plenty of pages meant to rank for one thing whose top bigrams pointed somewhere else entirely.

We lean on this hardest in competitor teardowns. Paste a rival’s top-ranking page, run two- and three-word grams, and the recurring phrases reveal the angles and entities the page is built around. That is not a license to copy — it is a map of the topical ground a winning page covers, so you can cover it more completely and in your own voice.

The discipline is to read the table as a diagnosis, not a checklist. A high count is not a goal; it is information. If filler dominates, the writing is loose. If the right concepts cluster near the top, the page is focused. We use it to decide what to cut and what to develop, then we go back to writing for the reader, not for the counter.

The math

How it works

The tool tokenizes your content into words and slides a window of length n across them, tallying each phrase. With stop-word filtering on, it skips phrases that begin or end with common filler words, then ranks the rest by frequency.

n-gram = any run of n consecutive words in the text
Count(g) = number of times the n-gram g appears across the content
  • n — the phrase length: 1 (word), 2 (bigram), or 3 (trigram).
  • Count — how many times each n-gram appears in the text.
  • Unique n-grams — the number of distinct phrases of that length found.

Stop-word filtering uses a standard short list of English function words and removes any n-gram that starts or ends with one. This is a practical content-audit heuristic, not a linguistic standard; turn it off for a raw count.

Why it matters

Why phrase frequency reveals what a page is about

Search engines model topics from the language a page uses, and so should you. An n-gram analysis surfaces the recurring phrases that define a document — the same kind of signal behind term-frequency techniques like TF-IDF. When the dominant phrases match your target topic, the page reinforces it; when they do not, the page is telling search engines a different story than you intended.

It is also the fastest competitive-research shortcut there is. Run the analyzer on a page that already ranks for your target query and the recurring two- and three-word phrases reveal the subtopics, entities, and angles that page is built on. Pair that with formal keyword research and you get both the demand side (what people search) and the supply side (what winning pages actually say).

Used well, it is a focus tool. Loose, padded writing shows up as filler dominating the table; tight, on-topic writing shows the right concepts clustered at the top. That makes it a natural companion to our keyword density and keyword prominence checks — together they answer how much, how early, and around what.

Benchmarks

Which n to use, and when

Different phrase lengths answer different questions. Most topic audits start with bigrams.

nRevealsBest for
1 (words)Dominant single termsSpotting overused words and quick density read
2 (bigrams)Core phrasesTopic focus checks and competitor teardowns
3 (trigrams)Specific conceptsFinding long-tail angles and named entities
Guidance is RGM practice. N-gram analysis underlies term-weighting methods like TF-IDF used widely in information retrieval.

Voices worth trusting

What content voices say about focus

Every page should be able to answer, in one phrase, what it is about. If it cannot, neither can the reader or the search engine.
Co-founder, Orbit Media (paraphrase)
Study the pages that already win. The patterns in their language tell you what the topic actually demands.
Founder, Backlinko (paraphrase)

Go deeper

Reading on content and measurement

Related on RGM

Keep learning

FAQ

Common questions

What is an n-gram?
An n-gram is a run of n consecutive words. A 1-gram is a single word, a 2-gram (bigram) is a two-word phrase, and a 3-gram (trigram) is a three-word phrase. N-gram analysis counts how often each appears.
What is an n-gram analyzer used for?
It reveals what a page is really about by ranking its most frequent words and phrases. Use it to audit your own drafts for focus and to reverse-engineer the language patterns of competitor pages that already rank.
Should I filter stop words?
Usually yes. Filtering skips filler like the, and, and of so meaningful phrases surface. Turn it off only when you want a raw count of every phrase, including function words.
Which n-gram size should I use?
Bigrams (n=2) are the most useful for topic checks. Single words show overuse, and trigrams surface specific concepts and long-tail angles. Try all three on the same text.
How is this different from keyword density?
Density measures one keyword you choose; the n-gram analyzer discovers the most frequent phrases for you, ranked, without you naming them first. They complement each other.
Can I use this for competitor research?
Yes. Paste a competitor’s ranking page and run bigrams and trigrams to see the subtopics and entities their page is built around, then cover the topic more completely in your own words.

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