How reliable is Google Keyword Tool

[Mike Hill]

Hey guys, just wanted to ask some keyword experts how accurate the Google Keyword Tool is as far as monthly search volume...

Is it close +-10% or is it completely out to lunch?

I'm comparing a very specific keyword and Google tells me there are 4,000 searches per month but another keyword tool is telling me 40.

That's a huge difference. What are your thoughts (its for natural search traffic) ?

Mike Hill

[zerofill]

Originally Posted by Mike Hill

Hey guys, just wanted to ask some keyword experts how accurate the Google Keyword Tool is as far as monthly search volume...

Is it close +-10% or is it completely out to lunch?

I'm comparing a very specific keyword and Google tells me there are 4,000 searches per month but another keyword tool is telling me 40.

That's a huge difference. What are your thoughts (its for natural search traffic) ?

Mike Hill

We use it constantly...along with the API as well...
But the thing with Google is you have to take in account that everyone wants to target Google...everyone is doing keyword research with Google...
So that bloats the numbers a lot I think.

We often will do something like compare results with Google Versus WordTracker...which I guess isn't a really fair comparison but... probably 60% of the time they are close...For daily volume if you take an average of the Google by dividing by 30.

For instance:
80 65
80 31
97 83
97 1169
97 63
97 78
97 136
97 73
120 189
120 223
147 134
147 134
147 211
180 328
180 221
180 213
180 191
220 136
270 218
270 446
270 189
330 2803
603 688
603 13
1103 1556

Numbers on the left are Google and ones on the right are wordtracker...
Many are in the ballpark many aren't...

But then again wordtracker free tool uses things like dogpile and metacrawler...so it isn't always a great comparison.

I think it is accurate enough to give you your ideal keywords though....
Because Jeremy Kelsall and I do it all the time using a tool I built awhile back.

[zerofill]

Plus also depends on if you are doing a broad match or an exact match...because that can really change the numbers...

[Mike Hill]

Thanks that's enough to make my mind up about getting the exact domain name which is still available

I looked at the top search results and the #1 position through to the #10 position and they are horrible at SEO I'm more than sure they are in those positions by accident.

Time to grab this one... I can be in the first position by tomorrow at most.

Mike Hill

Originally Posted by zerofill

We use it constantly...along with the API as well...
But the thing with Google is you have to take in account that everyone wants to target Google...everyone is doing keyword research with Google...
So that bloats the numbers a lot I think.

We often will do something like compare results with Google Versus WordTracker...which I guess isn't a really fair comparison but... probably 60% of the time they are close...For daily volume if you take an average of the Google by dividing by 30.

For instance:
80 65
80 31
97 83
97 1169
97 63
97 78
97 136
97 73
120 189
120 223
147 134
147 134
147 211
180 328
180 221
180 213
180 191
220 136
270 218
270 446
270 189
330 2803
603 688
603 13
1103 1556

Numbers on the left are Google and ones on the right are wordtracker...
Many are in the ballpark many aren't...

But then again wordtracker free tool uses things like dogpile and metacrawler...so it isn't always a great comparison.

I think it is accurate enough to give you your ideal keywords though....
Because Jeremy Kelsall and I do it all the time using a tool I built awhile back.

[mikecowles]

Hi,

I've used Google's Keyword Tool and several others, but they definitely give different info. My suggestion is to look at the results from GKT as well as keyword spy (Keyword Research Tool & Keyword Tracking | Keywordspy.com) and Word Tracker (Keyword services for professional search engine optimization). Then run some ppc campaigns with those keywords to see the 'real' results.

When you run your ppc campaigns, be sure to add the keywords as is, plus with "quotes" and [brackets]. This tells Google that you want broad match, phrase match and exact match. Each of these will give you different results and sometimes it can be significant.

Here's the difference for the keywords 'gym shoes'...

broad match: shows search for gym shoes in any order and with other words, like 'red shoes I wear to the gym' would show up.

"phrase match": only seaches the keywords in that order, but will include other text before and after, like 'affordable gym shoes in Chicago' would show up.

[exact match]: only searches for the exact words 'gym shoes'.

If you'd like to save some time, you can use Keyword Secretary for free to create the different deliminators for you.

Hope this helps!

-Mike Cowles. <><

[mikecowles]

You can read more at What are keyword matching options? - AdWords Help Center