Google Keyword Tool Numbers Changed DRASTICALLY?!

[jdwhite]

A few weeks ago, I had some keywords in the google keyword tool that were getting massive numbers in search volume. I advised a client of my to by the dead-on .com domain names for a couple of these.

For example:
---On keyword 1 it was 800,000+ global searches/month.
---On keyword 2 it was 600,000+ global searches/month.
---On keyword 3 it was 250,000+ global searches/month.

Granted, these were broad search results (not "exact" or "phrase").

Now, out of nowhere, the numbers are (still "broad", still "global"):

---Keyword 1 has dropped to 2,400/month.
---Keyword 2 has dropped to 880/month
---Keyword 3 has dropped to 27,100/month

The numbers on keyword 1 and 3 even changed from this morning to this afternoon.

The kicker? When you check the past months search volume, google ALSO has changed their historical search numbers. I have excel spread sheets with the old numbers from just a few weeks ago. The 'new' numbers the keyword tool is putting out are down by a RIDICULOUS amount.

Does anyone have ANY idea what is going on with this?

Is google figuring out how to filter out non-human search volume and these new numbers are real human searches only?

Has anybody else ever seen this happen with a keyword? I'm not talking about seasonal fluctuations. I'm saying it's like the old numbers never even existed!

PLEASE HELP.

Josh

[amasters]

are you sure there was no misspelling? sure that no other filters had been inadvertently selected?

[jdwhite]

I'm absolutely positive. I've checked this from every angle I can. I've involved my business partner.

I'm at a total loss, frankly.

[seoextent]

i seen some time

[jdwhite]

Originally Posted by seoextent

i seen some time

Glad to hear at least I'm not alone in having this happen.

Any other input out there?

[adam westrop]

OMG this is great news!

It seems the numbers are finally accurate!!!

GO GOOGLE!

I have verified some search numbers against sites top for positions and it does work out, it never did before!!!

E.G. Before 'mp3 player accessories' was down as like 300k monthly EXACT searches, I got a site top and nothing!!! Hardly any traffic, check the figures now and the term gets barely 2k searches a month. This ties up to what I experienced being at no.2 for a while!

Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

Finally Google may be publishing deadly accurate numbers!!

Way to go Google!!!!!!!!!!!!

[jdwhite]

Originally Posted by adam westrop

OMG this is great news!

It seems the numbers are finally accurate!!!

GO GOOGLE!

I have verified some search numbers against sites top for positions and it does work out, it never did before!!!

E.G. Before 'mp3 player accessories' was down as like 300k monthly EXACT searches, I got a site top and nothing!!! Hardly any traffic, check the figures now and the term gets barely 2k searches a month. This ties up to what I experienced being at no.2 for a while!

Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

Finally Google may be publishing deadly accurate numbers!!

Way to go Google!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for your reply, Adam.

I was wondering if this actually represented a shift in google to more accurate, reliable data. Perhaps they have learned to filter out automated queries that inflate their search volume?

I also think this might have serious implications for their PPC revenue, causing it to drop significantly for a lot of terms.

Also, what does this say about Google's market share in search? Does this mean Bing and Yahoo, etc are doing better than we thought?

[affly101]

This also have implications about developing websites around certain keyword phrases. If there is not enough volume, then why bother.

[jdwhite]

Originally Posted by affly101

This also have implications about developing websites around certain keyword phrases. If there is not enough volume, then why bother.

EXACTLY!!!

[daztrouk]

I've just noticed the exact same thing, and created a thread at Keyword headache in google keyword tool and market samurai before noticing this thread that you created.

I've only checked a couple of my sites, but the keyword estimate for them has now slumped DRASTICALLY. Maybe this is a good thing after all, as although it seems i've been wasting my time on these sites, as they hardly had much traffic when i finally got them into the top 3 on google, and the new data in google's tool seems to back this up, at least in going forward i'll be able to rely on accurate data from google for new sites in the future

[clansullivan]

Originally Posted by adam westrop

OMG this is great news!

It seems the numbers are finally accurate!!!

GO GOOGLE!

I have verified some search numbers against sites top for positions and it does work out, it never did before!!!

E.G. Before 'mp3 player accessories' was down as like 300k monthly EXACT searches, I got a site top and nothing!!! Hardly any traffic, check the figures now and the term gets barely 2k searches a month. This ties up to what I experienced being at no.2 for a while!

Thanks for bringing this to our attention!

Finally Google may be publishing deadly accurate numbers!!

Way to go Google!!!!!!!!!!!!

????? Why would you give kudos to Google for putting out GROSSLY INACCURATE BS information for so long - information that many people have trusted and placed good hard eanred $$ on???

Take in to account all of the other shenanigans like disabled PPC accounts and now this?

Google sucks. I hope they are eventually buried and gone.

[miranon]

This sucks!!! I'm developing a website with 600k exact keyword searches ( this was in adwords 2 weeks ago ) and now its like 3000. How can this be???

[terryd]

There certainly seems to be a major shift in the amount of traffic that they are reporting now which is good.

[rmolina88]

I've had a competitor's backlinks go from 2 to 650 this week.

[Tom Goodwin]

Originally Posted by rmolina88

I've had a competitor's backlinks go from 2 to 650 this week.

This is a thread about the Google Keyword Tool, right?

[rmolina88]

Originally Posted by Tom Goodwin

This is a thread about the Google Keyword Tool, right?

Well, Market Samurai is awesome too.

[Lighterbandit]

This could be a good thing. But it also makes you wonder whats going on behind Google.... I dunno this is defiantly a wave we must ride out!

[mooble]

I think this is that thing having to do with whether or not you are signed in to google for some reason. I think when you are signed in the numbers are way lower because it's based off adwords stats or soomething. this is just what' iv'e heard

[JamesM]

I noticed yesterday that the numbers shown were about 10-20% what was being reported before. I checked against KW where I rank in the top 3 and the new data looks far more realistic.

I wonder how this change will affect those following KW research methods that recommend particular search volumes (xfactor comes to mind)?

[Google.me]

lol yeah saw all those funny statistics...

[ellush]

I've seen this too, but is it not because you're logged in to Google Adwords? That's the real downer - uncovering what you think are killer keywords in the Keyword Tool and then logging in to Adwords and seeing the same keyword numbers drop by 90%. I'm now basing my keyword research on these logged in numbers.

EDIT: There you go, just checked the Keyword Tool (haven't been there for a week or so) and the numbers now match the Adwords logged in numbers. Looks like G has been making some big updates over the last few days...but at least the numbers are more realistic. Although my hot fave keyword dropped from 12000 searches to 590...

[socialbookmark]

I think previous information was for July and current information you get on Google adwords, are for August and its the reason of difference on the amount of searches.
Its my opinion.

[SCC]

Originally Posted by socialbookmark

I think previous information was for July and current information you get on Google adwords, are for August and its the reason of difference on the amount of searches.
Its my opinion.

So are you saying that 80% of the world took the month of August off?

[daztrouk]

Originally Posted by SCC

So are you saying that 80% of the world took the month of August off?

I can't speak for the rest of the global population, but i have been pretty busy lately

[bermuda]

I really do not know about the changes in numbers but the numbers displayed are not 100% accurate in most cases. They would tell you generally how popular some terms are over the net. I have examined some terms which were told to be used more than 15 thousand times a month by people but the No.1 site received only 50 clicks a day. The important thing is to know what words are to be chosen and forgetting about those digits shown.

[Natlex]

Originally Posted by clansullivan

????? Why would you give kudos to Google for putting out GROSSLY INACCURATE BS information for so long - information that many people have trusted and placed good hard eanred $$ on???

Take in to account all of the other shenanigans like disabled PPC accounts and now this?

Google sucks. I hope they are eventually buried and gone.

Because they put some work in updating their keyword tool? It was free btw... Google is awesome, I don't like some of their hardcore monitoring of PPC accounts and high CPC but if you don't like it go somewhere else...

[cowboy123]

wow, they've been messing with us for all this time

[nouseforaname]

From 100K to 260 only broad match
From 50K to 36 only [exact match]

I noticed it yesterday but my site is just jumped to #4th place on 1st page and got
almost 500 hits yesterday. It's odd, this not seems to be VERY accurate, what happened
to GAKT????

[FredJones]

Good to see you notice this. This is something I noticed 3 days back. Not only that, if you go to the older API interface you would still see the older data (that is what I had seen yesterday). And these newer numbers look much more practical than the older ones.

[miranon]

Originally Posted by FredJones

Good to see you notice this. This is something I noticed 3 days back. Not only that, if you go to the older API interface you would still see the older data (that is what I had seen yesterday). And these newer numbers look much more practical than the older ones.

No, they don't. I think something is wrong with the data. It's impossible that all keywords suddenly dropped to 10-20% of the previous values.

[Han Fan]

Yup,

that's why you use other tools to determine the true traffic

SEOBOOK
Semrush
Market Samurai

Han
p.s. Google keyword has not been very actual...

Originally Posted by jdwhite

A few weeks ago, I had some keywords in the google keyword tool that were getting massive numbers in search volume. I advised a client of my to by the dead-on .com domain names for a couple of these.

For example:
---On keyword 1 it was 800,000+ global searches/month.
---On keyword 2 it was 600,000+ global searches/month.
---On keyword 3 it was 250,000+ global searches/month.

Granted, these were broad search results (not "exact" or "phrase").

Now, out of nowhere, the numbers are (still "broad", still "global"):

---Keyword 1 has dropped to 2,400/month.
---Keyword 2 has dropped to 880/month
---Keyword 3 has dropped to 27,100/month

The numbers on keyword 1 and 3 even changed from this morning to this afternoon.

The kicker? When you check the past months search volume, google ALSO has changed their historical search numbers. I have excel spread sheets with the old numbers from just a few weeks ago. The 'new' numbers the keyword tool is putting out are down by a RIDICULOUS amount.

Does anyone have ANY idea what is going on with this?

Is google figuring out how to filter out non-human search volume and these new numbers are real human searches only?

Has anybody else ever seen this happen with a keyword? I'm not talking about seasonal fluctuations. I'm saying it's like the old numbers never even existed!

PLEASE HELP.

Josh

[BrenDavis]

maybe its the new kw tool?

[L41db4ck]

Originally Posted by Han Fan

Yup,

that's why you use other tools to determine the true traffic

SEOBOOK
Semrush
Market Samurai

Han
p.s. Google keyword has not been very actual...

Ah, I'm glad I found this thread as I was about to start another one because I've found these numbers down and just posted about it on the DP forum - my site is ranked #1 on google but i only get 5 clicks a day from google ? - Page 4 - The funny thing is that, for the keyword example on that thread Market Samurai still comes up with the old search figure so my question is...where does Market Samurai get it's data from?




1 month ago exact [Bathroom Supplies] was 9900 global and 2900 local - MS today still says 91 local per day. Who is right?

[clorets01]

They are changing thei algos it seems. This kind of things makes me less confident about google products.

[IntoTheAbyss]

I was about to post a similar thread.

I've noticed that the "new" keyword tool gives different results that are much lower than the "legacy" keyword tool.

Market Samurai's results match the legacy keyword tool results, so it may be a bug in the new "beta" tool.

[daztrouk]

Originally Posted by IntoTheAbyss

I was about to post a similar thread.

I've noticed that the "new" keyword tool gives different results that are much lower than the "legacy" keyword tool.

Market Samurai's results match the legacy keyword tool results, so it may be a bug in the new "beta" tool.

i would have thought it's more of a bug with market samuari accessing the 'old source' for it's data, as a new 'source' has now been created by google, which is why we have the 2 different keyword results from within the different google keyword tools

[L41db4ck]

Originally Posted by daztrouk

i would have thought it's more of a bug with market samuari accessing the 'old source' for it's data, as a new 'source' has now been created by google, which is why we have the 2 different keyword results from within the different google keyword tools

yes, is it a 'bug' in the new or is it now more accurate? And will MS have to change?

[bluefoot]

Originally Posted by L41db4ck

The funny thing is that, for the keyword example on that thread Market Samurai still comes up with the old search figure so my question is...where does Market Samurai get it's data from?

I also noticed a while back GKWT returned different results when logged in and when logged out. I also see the logged in and logged out numbers are now the same....when using the new interface.

When you use the old interface when logged out, the numbers are the old higher results. Market Samurai is probably hooked into the old interface API.

Until things settle out, it seems the source of the results will be very important to consider. Also, if the new lower results become the "norm", we'll probably need to change our personal thresholds when doing keyword research.

Phil B

[adamcm]

I personally think the numbers are much more accurate now. I had a post that received about 144 targeted keyword hits in the month of June. The old keyword tool told me that 3600 exact matches were performed that month. The new one told me that only 590 exact searches were performed on that term. Since I was in position #3, I am more inclined to believe the newer totals being displayed.

[L41db4ck]

Originally Posted by adamcm

I personally think the numbers are much more accurate now. I had a post that received about 144 targeted keyword hits in the month of June. The old keyword tool told me that 3600 exact matches were performed that month. The new one told me that only 590 exact searches were performed on that term. Since I was in position #3, I am more inclined to believe the newer totals being displayed.

I've noticed lately more and more people saying that the hits they receive from Google don't reflect the amount of searches listed in the (old)keyword tool, so I'm wondering if it's more accurate too.

[efex]

Well, just to let you know that I've done a test on all my sites' kw's and every one of them are now with poor numbers and they were supposed to have searches around 6k+
Now I know the reason for the low traffic I was receiving on my high ranking sites

My question now is what happens with the tools we have been using until now? Cause I've checked and all of them are still reporting the old data.

[L41db4ck]

Originally Posted by efex

Well, just to let you know that I've done a test on all my sites' kw's and every one of them are now with poor numbers and they were supposed to have searches around 6k+
Now I know the reason for the low traffic I was receiving on my high ranking sites

My question now is what happens with the tools we have been using until now? Cause I've checked and all of them are still reporting the old data.

Well you guys with the high ranking sites are in the best position to tell us whether the traffic relates to the higher or lower number of searches.

[Biggy Fat]

Now THIS will change aspects of the whole game!

[DiMcdonald]

Something is weird about the tool right now.
Yesterday I found keywords with 100,000 exact global searches and today when I checked it has 480 exact global searches!

Until I checked that keyword phrase today I had decided that it was just a normal monthly fluctuation, however, now I think its BUGGY!!!

DEcided to take the rest of the day off in Protest!!!

Di

[erazer]

I think the legacy tool has better numbers. I rank #1 for a keyword that the new tool says gets 500 searches a month but I get a steady 30 to 50 hits a day. The legacy tool has 2000 approx exact per month which also seems off but closer.

[amernian]

Well, Google actually has a set of accurate figures. Just that they display an estimated search/month.

The real numbers can be obtained by exporting the results (from adwords keyword tools) in CSV file.

Those numbers are the REAL number of searches/month. It's accurate because someone from Google told me

[itsallwhite]

I thought it was a problem with my keyword tool until I found this thread! I used to check certain terms regually and I was targetting an exact match keyword with 90k, now I find out it only has 27k. The country specific totals don't seem to have changed so much it is the global that seems drastically different

Do you think this is more or less accruate? has google made a statement about it?

[nouseforaname]

It's all fixed I think, I can see the figure is just like before.

[L41db4ck]

Originally Posted by nouseforaname

It's all fixed I think, I can see the figure is just like before.

I still get the same low figures but now I see that it's the same figures as if you are logged into your adwords account so I think someone has linked to the wrong data or something and it will probably return to normal soon.

The reason for the lower logged in figures could be explained here - Logged In/Out: Google Keyword Tool Gives Different Results

[efex]

Ok. I just did a test on 15 keywords trying the different tools.

Logged in or not the new kw tool is showing the same LOW data everybody is talking about.

The old kw tool is showing the inflated data every tool is giving and the data we have done our research.

The question here is: Do we beleive the old kw tool has accurate data or we state that old data is not valid and the NEW low data is the realistic one??

I guess only the people with ranking sites can answer that.
On my side, I can say I have two sites on #3 position and they are receiving 9 to 10 visits every day. They were suposed to have 6.6k and 3.6k respectively. So I guess the data was not correct.
BUT, what about the people that has sites on top positions and is receiving the traffic expected?? IS it because of article directories traffic? twitter traffic? or is it just as the search numbers reflected? I don't know.

And what about EVERY product out there basing its keyword research methods on this old data that now is supposed to be unrealistic??
I suppose somebody may have had some success with them right?

Many things to think about.