The "Dark" Side Of Keyword Research

[KateD]

Hey Guys....

I have been fortunate enough to do keyword research in hundreds of different niches.

To me, doing keyword research is like taking a glimpse at the consciousness of the world.

I get to see what exactly people are searching for. Beyond all of the hype about what's a hot niche and what's not, I get the opportunity to not only see what niches are popular, but also what specific areas within that niche is really on the minds of people.

But there is a negative aspect to this.

A couple months back I was working on this Adoption blog of mine. While doing the keyword research for it, I stumbled upon the following keyword phrase:

"home abortion methods"

Regardless of how you feel about the whole Pro-Choice/Pro-Life abortion issue, the fact that someone would risk doing an abortion at home is mindboggling. The chances of something going wrong during and after this "procedure" (especially infection) resulting in harm (and death) to the mother is high.

But what was even more sad was that my keyword research tool told me that 33 people each day were looking up that exact phrase.

(I just checked Google's Keyword Tool and they say that this phrase gets 1300 searches a month - which averages out to 43.3 searches a day).

I was and am very disturbed by this fact.

I did a little more digging and found several other related keyword phrases.

Just so you guys know, I am a HUGE fan oh horror movies, but this was making me quite queasy. I kept getting the image of some young pregnant girl, sitting in front of the computer, deparate for a "solution".

33 searches a day equals out to over 12,000 searches a year for this info.

So then I did the unthinkable and put the following phrase into my trusty keyword research tool:

"how to kill"

What I saw almost made me throw up. The top keyword phrase got over 700 searches EVERY DAY. The top phrase was:

"how to kill a fetus at home"


Now that's sick. I wish that I had never done the extra "research" and would have just left it alone. Knowing that that many people search for this phrase each day is really troubling to me as a human being.

I still love keyword research. But learning too much can have a lasting effect.

KateD

[Wakunahum]

I'm not sure you need a keyword research tool to become aware of the fact that people don't always make the best choices.

[Valorie]

Wow, that's very disturbing. Perhaps a good SEO person could take over those keywords and push people towards adoption sites? At the very least, Planned Parenthood?

I have a horse blog, and with my keyword research I was shocked to see how many searches there were for "horse sex" and "horse ****" I thought they were looking for well endowed men. I was wrong. Apparently some people are bent. About half the keyword phrases with "horse" in them were of the vomit-inducing variety.

You are surely right about keyword research offering a glimpse into the human psyche.

-Valorie

[Gooddeal86]

man, these people wanna turn into centaurs

[Brad Gosse]

Wow

Doesn't matter what your politics are. That is a sad state of affairs.

[ExRat]

Hi,

If those things disturb you, then you should bear in mind that threads like these, and the inquisitive nature of humans mean that the figures are skewed - the world is not as bent, twisted and sad as the figures would have you believe.

Many people conduct research for a variety of reasons - researching niches they choose not to go into, researching topics to write about and a million other reasons - and by doing so, they often skew the results.

As marketers, we should be logically minded enough to know these things and therefore we wouldn't go around saying 'this phrase gets XXX searches a day therefore XXX number of people are interested (for the wrong reasons) in some ungodly act.'

As marketers, we should also understand the power of viral elements and know that when you say -

What I saw almost made me throw up. The top keyword phrase got over 700 searches EVERY DAY. The top phrase was:

"how to kill a fetus at home"


Now that's sick. I wish that I had never done the extra "research" and would have just left it alone. Knowing that that many people search for this phrase each day is really troubling to me as a human being.

...that over time, as hundreds of different people find this thread (and possibly make other similar comments elsewhere because of it) it could easily lead to someone else having the same conversation in a year's time, but the search term has 2k searches a day.

Curiosity is a powerful thing. For all we know, not one of those 700 searches might be a person actually considering doing it. If something is macabre, then there are always going to be people curious about it, and interested in talking about it. This thread proves the point. It's a bit like Chinese whispers.

Feel better?

[Daniel Molano]

I would have to agree with Roger on this one. In a lot of cases the results have been tampered with, by actual niche research itself or simply by the idle curiosity of people who see these type of discussions.

Nevertheless, that doesn't change the fact that there are people actually looking for such things, even if it's just 50% of what the keyword research tools display.

I have a colleague in the adult industry who does heavy SEO, he showed me his keyword research results and you would be incredibly surprised by what he found.