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Keyword Confusion

by LarryC
8 replies
I am finding it confusing and a bit frustrating that you can get very different results when doing keyword research, depending on what tools you use. I recently bought Micro Niche Finder, which looks to be a good and efficient program. So I tested a keyword phrase that came up with what appeared to be very impressive potential - 18,000 searches per month, with only about 2000 competing Google sites. Ok, great. But now I just plugged in the same phrase at Wordtracker's free keyword tool and got totally different, and far less exciting results -- 6 searches per day, which would be only 180 per month. This is, interestingly enough, exactly 1/100th of what Micro Niche Finder told me! Now I realize, even with my limited knowledge of SEO and such, that different tools use different measurements. It's sort of like political polls I suppose. However, when you get results that are this different, it makes it hard to know what to do. In one case, I have what looks to be a potential gold mine. In the other, probably a waste of time with so few searches. So who do you believe with all of the different keyword/niche search tools out there?
#confusion #keyword
  • Profile picture of the author sylviad
    Your best bet is Google Keyword Tool or Overture's Keyword Tracker tool. Those are about as reliable as you can get. Just remember that Google gives you the monthly total while Overture provides daily (I think) results. They use the results based on their own SEs.

    Sounds like Micro Niche Finder might have given you annual results or results taken from less popular SEs. Or maybe there's a glitch in the program. Can't say I've seen many (any?) keywords with the results you got. Sounds like the numbers are reversed - the higher is results and lower is searches.

    Try running the search again in MNF and see if you get the same numbers.

    Sylvia
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    • Profile picture of the author LarryC
      I appreciate all of the thoughtful responses!

      Sylvia, I know most of the time the numbers are reversed, with competing pages being much higher, but with this particular phrase there really were more searches than competing pages, at least according to MNF. Btw, I check for competing pages separately on Google, I only look up the number of searches on MNF.
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  • Profile picture of the author aleisterone
    I have Micro Niche Finder. It`s a great tool.
    You have to know that wordtracker gets it`s kw results from DogPile. Have you ever heard of it? If you`re new, or just not a hardcore marketer, you probably never heard of it. Dogpile, as I remember has very little share of the search engine market.
    I don`t trust google kw tool neither. Why? Because it`s meant for adwords. It is meant to say to the marketer: "Hey,your kw has lots of searches, wanna pay for your listings?"

    My philosophy is this: if it`s a buying kewyword and it has at least 20 searches per month according to wordtracker, I go for it.
    Good luck, my friend!
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    • Profile picture of the author LarryC
      Aleisterone, glad you are finding Micro Niche Finder to be a good tool. I'm just starting out with it and like that it's easy to use and covers so many variables, such as finding affiliate programs for keywords.


      IowaGal, thanks for your feeback as well. I will keep using Wordtracker too. I like the new feature -at least I just found it- that tells you how many clicks the No. 1 site in Google gets. I suppose sorting out different sets of data is all part of the learning curve when it comes to finding a profitable niche!
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  • Profile picture of the author digitalproductreporter
    the only way to find exactly what people are searching for in google is to buy some keywords through adwords.

    That will tell you how many people are searching for the terms RIGHT NOW!

    Any other tool are guesses and estimates.
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  • Profile picture of the author IowaGal
    Originally Posted by LarryC View Post

    I am finding it confusing and a bit frustrating that you can get very different results when doing keyword research, depending on what tools you use. I recently bought Micro Niche Finder, which looks to be a good and efficient program. So I tested a keyword phrase that came up with what appeared to be very impressive potential - 18,000 searches per month, with only about 2000 competing Google sites. Ok, great. But now I just plugged in the same phrase at Wordtracker's free keyword tool and got totally different, and far less exciting results -- 6 searches per day, which would be only 180 per month. This is, interestingly enough, exactly 1/100th of what Micro Niche Finder told me! Now I realize, even with my limited knowledge of SEO and such, that different tools use different measurements. It's sort of like political polls I suppose. However, when you get results that are this different, it makes it hard to know what to do. In one case, I have what looks to be a potential gold mine. In the other, probably a waste of time with so few searches. So who do you believe with all of the different keyword/niche search tools out there?
    Hi Larry -
    You're absolutely right when you say that the numbers on a search term vary widely. The different keyword services all use different ways of compiling their keyword lists and regardless of who you use, you will never get 100% accuracy.

    Now, I don't know what service Micro Niche Finder suggests for your keywords but here's what I do know.

    Far too many people are using the numbers that Google is giving within the AdWords tool as a strong basis for keyword research. Why this can give such enormously wrong results is that the numbers you see within the tool are not just coming from Google.com searches. They come from Google blog posts, Gmail, and a wide array of spots that Google "controls". If this is the tool that the program is using to give you an idea of how many searches there are a month, take it with a grain of salt.

    Personally I've tried many, many different keyword research tools over the years and have always been happy with Wordtracker as being the closest estimate of keyword searches.

    I've also found that the traffic I receive based on the keyword research I've done at Wordtracker always tends to be just a little bit more than the numbers Wordtracker gave me which is always a pleasant surprise.

    So if you're looking for the closest match on numbers, I'd stick with Wordtracker - even their free tool can work wonders with those on a limited budget.
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    • Profile picture of the author sylviad
      I've used Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker and Ad Word Analyzer (a software program) and the results are so similar it's not worth mentioning.

      Sylvia
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      • Profile picture of the author IowaGal
        Originally Posted by sylviad View Post

        I've used Google Keyword Tool, Wordtracker and Ad Word Analyzer (a software program) and the results are so similar it's not worth mentioning.

        Sylvia
        Interesting.

        When Google first started posting numbers I decided to test a keyword and ran an AdWords PPC advertisement based on that keyword.

        The numbers of views for the keyword in Google's search results (not the content network) yielded far, far less than what Google claimed that keyword to have. As a matter of fact, the numbers were far closer to the numbers that Wordtracker gave me.

        So I'm curious how the keywords you used were so similar they weren't worth mentioning. Did you mean that they didn't bring you in the traffic you expected? Or that the numbers were so similar that it didn't make a difference as to what program you used?

        I'm always interested in others' keyword experiences.
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