Google Keyword Tool Is Way Off - Anyone Else Notice This?

google keyword tool sucks. Everyone talks about how its accurate but its NEVER been accurate for me when i hit a top ten or #1 spot. Their numbers are MASSIVELY inflated.

I do like to get keywords they suggest and plug them into accurate tools to sort them. But as far as targeting a term they have for the suggested searches i never do.

Your best bet is to use a few tools (including googles) and then taking the average.

Also some keywords are seasonal... Check Google trends for your keyword and see if the traffic levels there match what your seeing now.

Is traffic on the rise over the past few months or has it declined?

The other thing that factors in is country location. Maybe the results in Google's keyword tool show world wide results and you're only showing up for Google in the USA.

Who knows!

At the end of the day no keyword tool is 100% accurate. I basically use them as a guide. Once you know your market you can pretty much tell which phrases they will type in and work from there.

google keyword search # is a projected #, when the # is about 10K range (or even 100K), statistically, it does not have much meaning because the total search # is a huge #. The uncertainty interval is too big.

however, it should be much more accurate than any others, because it is projected based on google's own search data while google has the highest % of search market.


david

Difficult to say for certain without knowing the monthly search trend.
December (?) there were an average of 320 searches per day.

If this trend continued into January, (and it may not have done) then of 320 searches I recall I've read somewhere, and this agrees with the Market Samurai stats I use, that about half of search enquiries result in clicks.

Of these clicks, the #1 serp gets about 40% of the total which means for one day you could expect 320 x 0.5 x 0.4 = 64 Visits

it's been off??? wth? how can this be??? this is Google for crying out loud! The mother of all databases! The Adwords Advertising Mint that made them billions!!! Okay, now who would like my dissertation and my hard core TRAFFIC facts without all the yada yada yada generalization that everyone seems to lay on around the forums? I like to give the REAL scoop.

i'll give you my initial assessment (a 10 page paper) on why and then I'll quote from scripture (as head leader Stomper might say). You'll need to ask for the initial assessment as I do not give out links in a post. So I'll be quoting from the most recent scriptuire of STSE2 from the man himself Dan Thies.

all this free? yeah sure -- why not

On the Initial Google Assessment Paper I wrote, I even got someone in 30DC squad who is watching out for the head honcho over there to call his attention to the paper and come bring some clarification in the comments to us at our group. ;o) Wasn't that nice of him? Unfortunately, the ol fella got answered back by me and he apparently forgot to come back and answer again (I guess I am apparently not important enough for his time -- but that's cool too). And ol fellas forget and I don't blame em.

Anywho, the thing is this, without my big dissertation as to why #s are the way they are, here ya go:

1. What Brent says above is absolutely correct, you must switch the drop-down to "EXACT MATCH" for better results that are more honed down to smaller (yet still HIGHLY inaccurate if you read my 10 page paper on it). Broad match is gathering and accumulating and culminating numbers from a broad spectrum of searches, where as "exact match" hones it down to THE specific term.

2. Google's Adwords #s from the Google Keyword External Tool (which is what the Search Counts are and they are derived from the Adwords API) come from Google.com, Google's traffic, advertising and search partners (AOL and the lot) and all that traffic is accumulated into the calculation of the search count you see. Starting to make more sense on the wide scale of things as you are probably thinking that the numbers are supposed to reflect number JUST from Google.com

3. Google's database and datacenter portfolio throughout the planet as the elasticity of the internet expands, Google can only give *estimates* and the estimates they do give are mainly for who? They are for the advertiser (Google could care less what the webmaster thinks -- their bread and butter money program is main stream Adwords Advertising program that brings in Billions and let's not forget, Google must report to their stockholders). We (us business owners) are drop, a bread crumb to them. This is exactly why the Google SOAP Search API degregated and was shut off in 2006 and no more keys were handed out. The current AJAX Search API is nowhere close to perfect according to the index either. (I'm now talking competition results from the Google.com index that I use for intitle search parameters in my software system).

4. Quoting from Dan Thies and Stompernet's Stomping the Search Engines 2 scripture, Google is showing a limited portfolio of keywords in the Google External Keyword tool and withholding the lesser important (long tail easier dominated keywords) that have lower volume that you would normally find at the Professional's Choice, WordTracker (I included both databases in my own software system which both databases work seamlessly together) -- and I can show you video proof of how that works if you require). In essence, the numbers we see do not closely relate at all to the organic index known as Google.com (and again, if you want the initial assessment to get the full facts of my traffic figures on #1 key positions, you can see how pathetic the numbers really are).

Furthermore, Google is NOT showing Trademarked Terms which is immensely important in RANKING in the organic search results. In fact, one of my positioning strategies that I'll be revealing in the next six months has to do with what I just mentioned and basically appearing EVERYWHERE your competition does and irritating them so much, they either want to BUY YOU OUT or GO OUT OF BUSINESS (and I have proof of two situations where someone just gave in -- and a major situation of one of the major services wanting to buy me out). "Competition Checkmate" goes into a lot further detail than that (because there are psychologicaly mind-bending ninja strategies I can't reveal right now or you would get visiting ninjas over your house), but and that's NOT what we're discussing here. W'ere discussing Google.

I hate being long-winded and I'm practicing how to try NOT to be (and will also be revealing how I'm doing that as well), but hopefully the above was enlightening and to the point, but that's really just a microcosm or simply a bread crumb if you will of the entire breadth of the lecture I could conduct on this matter. (And I literally do HATE boring people with stupid strategy talk and insider keyword research stuff only CEOs know about).

If you have any further questions of me or if there is any way I can be of service to help enlighten anybody further, I'd be more than glad to as I pretty much live and breath this and speak with the heads of all major services like Mike Mindel, Andy Mindel and David Warmuz and have established multi-year contracts with all the key players, so I *can* give you the inside scoop if you ask the right question

Lastly, I want to stress once again HOW important it is to stay at ONE database based on what I said above. IF I told you the grosser truth (and I don't want to disgust you totally), you may be totally turned off. This is WHY -- once again -- that you must turn to SECONDARY databases in order to make sure you ARE getting and finding ALL the keywords you must dominate the ENTIRE keyword portfolio landscape (and I can show you a poster to illustrate this point if you wish).

A lot of people are huffin a lotta bull because Google gave the numbers out, but that don't mean squat.

And if you ask me further, I'll tell you what the REAL KEY of the Google search count is. But again, I'm trying NOT to be long-winded, remember...

sionara -- I must make now another walk break and then post about my Power Super Affiliate Web 2.0 Video Social Proof Landing Page Formula that I figured out just last night by accident... this is gonna be fun... ;D

ha -- forgot about my keyword positioning -- for the initial Google assessment, no need to ask, just go to Google and type in "google assessment"

hey gogetta, those results really wanna make you be a gogetta, ay? (and no, I'm not Canadian, but one of my staff experts is)...

Its not enough to be on page 1 number 1 on google
What you see there needs to be a message enticing people to click
I know people who are so exited to be on page 1 but they dont get clicks because the text that is presented does not sell the looker to click
This is where adwords shine because you can instantly change what is shown.
I have my share of titles showing up in google as www or index page
or even new page because we launched before we were finished got indexed real fast and then we are stuck with www as atitle for a while.
So if you want maximum clicks you need to ensure that what shows up in google is a SALES MESSAGE
Of course you may well have already done this but I know lots of people who have not and then they wonder why the clicks dont come