Google's KWT "Local Searches" ? or not? experienced marketers?

[Dano1981]

hey warriors seeking experienced advice,

I've been jumping into the GKWT to look up info on niches/microniches.

BUT no one ever seems to say use "Local Searches"???

Google KWT

Global Searches ?
or
Local Searches ?

instead it seems their info is on "global searches", or it's not specified
and of course therefore it seems to follow the prescribe that most use Global Searches?

If my blog is in English, I'm in the US, using clickbank ? amazon products

so do I really want to just look at the # of "Global Searches" ??? or are
people really focusing in on "Local Searches" but no one ever seems to indicate that?
(in the tool's options, I so indicate "US" and "English")

Any clarification from ones experienced and who really understand
my question, please chime in!


thank you much!
Dano~(confused warrior puppy!)

[Mike Grant]

I always use local searches.

[Dano1981]

thanks tarheel,

anyone else have an idea?

Dano~

[DukeNukem]

You probably don't hear people talking about local searches much because they're trying to sell you something...like "#1 for search term that gets 35,000 searches/mo!" So it sounds better that way, even if they're marketing a product that only ships within the USA or something.

If you're selling an info product or something that ships cheap International, then global is fine. Otherwise if you're selling physical products then you really have to focus on local since not many people are going to ship a big heavy product internationally.

[markowe]

I've been wanting to mention this same thing for a while now. Here's the deal as I understand it: a lot of people when they say 'local only' they actually mean US local, forgetting that US is not local to everyone!

Ignore that advice, it's totally overgeneralised - you should be thinking, what market am I targetting with my site and can I sell/recommend products just to that market or a global market?

Example: you are promoting a product on Amazon.com so you are only really interested in the number of US 'local' searches because people from other countries don't tend to order physical products from abroad, and Amazon.com only ships CDs and books abroad anyway, pretty much.

Example: you are targetting Amazon products but you are able to geo-target visitors by their IP address (some affiliate scripts can do this) and send UK visitors to UK Amazon, US to US etc. Well, then you are certainly interested in more than just 'local' searches.

Example: you are making a site monetised with Adsense. There the geotargetting is done for you and there will be ads shown that are relevant to many different countries (though not all give the same click value) so you can more or less take the global results or at least a combination of US, CA, AU, DE numbers - these being the most valuable markets.

Of course then language is a factor, plus in practice Google may rank you highest only for one country, but I hope this makes sense in terms of keyword research. Saying 'always use local search numbers' doesn't make sense as a generalisation yet you hear it all the time.

[Dano1981]

thank you so much for your insight marlowe

when I change the language "on or off" for english
the same # of searches for global and local show?

the only thing the "local" seems to change if it's within the US........

So it seems by default all the searches are for english speaking? and that local only determines
those english speakers witin the US? that what it seems

BUT aren't people who search in countries where English isn't spoken,
so where are their "searches" for the kWT?

Seems odd that only "english" speaking comes up for the tool whether
indicted or not?

anyone?

dano~

[BacklinkExcellence]

Originally Posted by Dano1981

thank you so much for your insight marlowe

when I change the language "on or off" for english
the same # of searches for global and local show?

the only thing the "local" seems to change if it's within the US........

So it seems by default all the searches are for english speaking? and that local only determines
those english speakers witin the US? that what it seems

BUT aren't people who search in countries where English isn't spoken,
so where are their "searches" for the kWT?

Seems odd that only "english" speaking comes up for the tool whether
indicted or not?

anyone?

dano~

Yes, it's the default setting. What others see will depend on their location, google uses geotargeting for their sites as well as the keyword tool.

Anyway, you should focus on local (US) if it's really just US customers you're targeting. If you're selling some clickbank guide, you obviously target all english speaking countries, not necessarily US only. If you want to have customers only from the UK (because it's easier to rank there for many terms than in google.com) you would set the GKT to UK and focus on the local searches again.

[Dano1981]

thanks backlinker,

(I assume)most are like me and simply want someone who can whip out a CC and place an order on CB or amazon (the advertisers I'll be focusing on)

I can see how shipping can affect a physical products weight and
how that can affect the balance

Can someone quantify then, in what instances (other than shipping and a products weight) why local would be of less importance, and why "global" would be of higher value?

dano~

Originally Posted by BacklinkExcellence

Yes, it's the default setting. What others see will depend on their location, google uses geotargeting for their sites as well as the keyword tool.

Anyway, you should focus on local (US) if it's really just US customers you're targeting. If you're selling some clickbank guide, you obviously target all english speaking countries, not necessarily US only. If you want to have customers only from the UK (because it's easier to rank there for many terms than in google.com) you would set the GKT to UK and focus on the local searches again.

[markowe]

Originally Posted by BacklinkExcellence

Yes, it's the default setting. What others see will depend on their location, google uses geotargeting for their sites as well as the keyword tool.

Anyway, you should focus on local (US) if it's really just US customers you're targeting. If you're selling some clickbank guide, you obviously target all english speaking countries, not necessarily US only. If you want to have customers only from the UK (because it's easier to rank there for many terms than in google.com) you would set the GKT to UK and focus on the local searches again.

We should clear up some confusion here - the geographical setting (US or UK, or All) is not the same as the Language setting. The language setting simply gives you keyword suggestions in the specified language! Here is an example to show how I understand it, though this is the bit I am least clear on, I will admit:

Do an Exact match, with "Only show ideas closely related to my search terms" checked and Country set to UK and Language set to Portuguese and search on 'Sony'.

You will get a bunch of mostly GENERIC keyword suggestions, like product names, which could be any language, and are probably coming from Google.co.uk - what I am not clear on is whether it considers them of an unidentified language so throws them out, or is just chucking them out anyway.

But you also get some Portuguese suggestions - now I am GUESSING that these are words Google identifies as Portuguese, but probably either searched via Google.co.uk, OR by a Portuguese person (via Google.Portugal maybe) but FROM the UK. That would be why there are so few - we have [assistencia tecnica sony] for example, but it's off the radar in terms of search numbers, just a handful. But you can imagine a few Portuguese people in the UK whose laptop has broken, looking for Sony technical support?

I could be totally wrong with this, but you definitely have to firmly separate the language from the geographical location. However, MOSTLY they coincide, so I wouldn't lose sweat over it. Just use the language of the country, of the product name you are promoting and of the retailer you are promoting. They will probably coincide for the most part anyway.

Originally Posted by Dano1981

Can someone quantify then, in what instances (other than shipping and a products weight) why local would be of less importance, and why "global" would be of higher value?
dano~

I sort of thought I covered this in the earlier post - how do you mean 'of less importance'/higher value?

OK, another example - I am selling a Clickbank product about 'home improvement'. ANYONE can buy this product electronically from anywhere in the world so you are looking at the global number of searches for your related keyword. If they still only add up to 150 searches or something even at a global level, you might say, well, that's not really worth going for. Also, the language will be set to English because if people are searching for things relating to 'home improvement' in Portuguese, they will probably not be interested in English-language materials, and ANYWAY you are not going to write your site in Portuguese, are you, so how can you target those keywords?

If I want to promote a set of bleachers (Amazon.com: First Class Bleacher 8x19: Sports &... ) from Amazon.com that cannot possibly be shipped abroad, then I would forget about everything except Local US searches. And by the way, of course the language would be set to English - the word 'bleachers' is an English word, end of story!

In fact, concerning shipping abroad - just forget about it, hardly ANYBODY buys things from another country (there probably are niches where this is more common, but generally) so whether it's bleachers or beachballs, if you are linking to Amazon.com then you only care about local US searches!

Hope this helps - knowing me this only makes it more confusing

[GeorgR.]

always local, and always US.

[first response]

Markowe, thanks for sharing good information in details.