Google Updates Keyword Tool - If you Focus on Local Search, this affects you.

[nichemarketninja]

I do a fair amount of local search projects, for example “carpet cleaning Sydney” so I rely quite heavily on Google’s Adwords Keyword Research Tool.
Up until now, when selecting a particular country to focus search statistics results on, Google has returned two important columns of Data. These were:

• Average Monthly Search Volume
• Search Volume for March (Or whatever the previous Month is)

This has now changed. The two columns of data that are now returned are:

• Local Search Volume: March (or whatever the previous month is)
• Global Monthly Search Volume

This affects me in a few different ways.

Firstly, I can now no longer see an average search volume for a keyword for a specific country, only the search volume for the previous month. That is bad as I rely on the average more than the previous month data to determine the viability of a particular keyword.
Secondly, If you select "All Countries and Territories" you still get the "Local Search Volume" column which means they are using your IP address to determine the Local Search volume data, I hope this does not affect the numbers when searching for a country other than the one you are in.

I need to research more into this, so will feedback more concrete information as and when I discover it, but it would be great to hear what other people’s views are of this. I believe the change took place on the 22nd of April, so I assume other people have noticed this as well.

Thanks
Nick

[putri144]

did you have a right software or program installation for your googles?

[malfumos]

Maybe you don't need to focus only one country so that you will know what is the exact volume for each keyword you have searched.

[Tsnyder]

Originally Posted by malfumos

Maybe you don't need to focus only one country so that you will know what is the exact volume for each keyword you have searched.

Yes, you do. When you're doing a marketing campaign
for a local business (as in the carpet cleaner example)
global results are irrelevant. Someone in Chicago isn't
likely to be looking for a carpet cleaner in Singapore.

Tsnyder

[nichemarketninja]

Originally Posted by Tsnyder

Yes, you do. When you're doing a marketing campaign
for a local business (as in the carpet cleaner example)
global results are irrelevant. Someone in Chicago isn't
likely to be looking for a carpet cleaner in Singapore.

Tsnyder

That's it exactly, Global Search results for a local market have no relevance, why they even display them is beyond me (Yes I know you can customize the report columns). I have emailed a contact I have at Google to try get contact details for the correct person at Google to speak to about this. I tried chatting to Adwords support, but they just said "Read the Help files".

[Michael Nguyen]

I have noticed this too. It seem it's gonna be this way. The way I'm working around this is (may not be safe) to just look for searches above 1500 per month for a keyword. If they keyword is a buying keyword , bung it into amazon and see if it's selling.
Bit of calculated trial and error.

[Michael Nguyen]

This is what it says for Local search volume:

Local Search Volume: [Last Available Month]: This column shows the approximate number of search queries matching each keyword. This statistic applies to searches performed on Google and the search network in the most recent month for which we have data. It's specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Typenot enough data. Learn more about the Keyw drop-down menu. If we don't have enough data for a particular keyword, you'll see ord Tool's

Now because the average search volume bar is not there anymore, the best we can now use is the Search volume trends

Search Volume Trends: This column shows fluctuations in Google search volume for each keyword over a recent twelve-month period. Each bar in the graph is relative to the keyword's overall performance for the 12-month period. This statistic is specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu. If we don't have enough data for your targeted country and language, no data will be displayed.

Bold blue letters is most important here.
So if your keyword is getting 5000 local searches per month (your target country), look at the Volume search trends and see if the bars are consistent.

Example below for 2 keywords for US searches
both are large searches and the search trend bar is consistent.
Good luck

[internetwarrior97]

wow this is such a great tool - especially for people (like me *ahem*) who sometimes target the more local audience.

[nichemarketninja]

Originally Posted by michael_nguyen

Search Volume Trends: This column shows fluctuations in Google search volume for each keyword over a recent twelve-month period. Each bar in the graph is relative to the keyword's overall performance for the 12-month period. This statistic is specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu. If we don't have enough data for your targeted country and language, no data will be displayed.

Great find Michael, since search volume is country specific, it still gives some indication of local search trends. Am still going to miss the local average search figures though.
Cheers
Nick