Google's Keyword Figures Can Mislead You

Hi all....

I'm not new to this forum but new to posting.

I'm sure a number of you are following xfactor or clickbumps adsense strategy. I believe their strategies are very good and I thank them for disclosing what they've been doing and having success with.

The problem that most of us following these strategies encounter is getting traffic to our sites. I've heard a lot of people on here who have done keyword research to find keywords with great search numbers but after putting in the hard work to get their site to the top of the google search engine they realise they only get one or two visitors a day.

It happened to me as well and I'm sure its happening to loads more people. I heard a lot of people on here saying you should just keep churning out one site after the other and eventually you will get a few sites that will do the trick. Now, all that sounds great but it means you need to have the willingness to keep buying domains after domains and trying to get it to the top of the search engines to find out if it will be successful. I think that seems like a lot of guess work.

The question I started asking myself was. "Why is googles figures so out of whack?". It was then that I started to pay more attention to the information the google adwords keyword tool(GAKT) was giving me. Firstly, you need to make sure that when doing your keyword research you use the exact option. That should give you an indication of how many people search for that particular word or words in exactly that format.

Now here is the interesting bit. The google keyword tool was designed for advertisers who will pay google for traffic not for us free seo freaks. The search numbers google gives you is based on how many people will be searching for your product if you were to advertise using adwords. Those search numbers include searches on goolge's main page and "google search partners". Google never reveals all its search partners.

over here it tells you some of these partners


adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6119

Among their search partners are Google Maps, Google Product Search, Google Groups, Virgin Media and Amazon.com

This means that anytime someone searches on any of these partners sites and a google listing is shown google counts it as a search and its added to their search numbers. This can really inflate the numbers and make it seem like a good keyword to target when really it is not.

For example if 3000 people visit amazon.com and type in "grey coffe machines" and amazon shows a sponsored listing by google at the bottom of the page of all 3000 searches, google will count all 3000 searches. That might give the impression the numbers are really good when in reality they are not good for free seo listings but good for paid adwords advertisers.

Don't get me wrong here, there are some benefits to these search partners. Search partners like virgin media, aol, netscape, earthlink,
ComCast and others will show web listings and sometimes your site may show on theirs. Other times it doesn't. I think some have their own way of ranking sites on their pages even if the search listings are powered by google. Also most of these partners value their paid sponsors more and therefore have a lot more sponsors at the top of their web listings. Some have up to 10 sponsored listings before their normal web listings. Now, how do you beat that. Even if you were number one on you will still be number eleven on their page.

So before you go jumping into any niche do your research well. Remember that the search numbers are not only for google.com or google.co.uk etc. They are for all searches done over the google search network and believe me the network is large and getting bigger everyday. After all googles number one priority is to turn a profit and the larger the network the more they can offer their advertisers and make more money. The adwords keyword tool will only get worse. I believe that is why google came up with the search based keyword tool.

Search Based Keyword Tool (SBKT)

You can find out more about it here

google.com/support/sktool/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156810


Get the actual tool here

google.com/sktool/


The tool was designed specifically for adwords users but I believe every one can use it to their benefit. It is supposed to help adwords users find new keywords for their adwords campaign. The keywords suggested are based on actual queries made on google.com or .uk etc not their search partners. It also gives you the average search numbers those keywords get every month. This tool is by no means accurate but it gives you an indication of how many people are searching for your chosen keyword on google itself. I believe that is very useful information.

Boy have I ranted....Sorry for the long post.

I love learning what I can from this forum and thankful to anyone who shares what they've experienced.

This is what I know so far...It might not be the whole story but it's up to you guys to do your own research as well.

When it comes down to it the best way to find out how many people search for a product on google is to actually set up an adwords campaign with the exact match function. The number of impressions you get is the number of people searching for that keyword. It might be a long process but worth it if you going for a competitive keyword that has lots of searches.

My 2cents..... Hope it helps others.