Which is the best tool for finding accurate keywords: Google or Word Tracker?

by davejohnson333

Posted: 16 years ago 23 replies

If some of you have tried both wordtracker and google you see big discrepancies in these two tools for finding key words. For example, google has the propensity for mixing words together and giving you inaccurate results. Let me show you why I think this: Let's say you are trying to find the key word search count for apple pies. They may give you a monthly count of 1,000 for local and 3,000 for global. They will also give you exactly the same count for the combination: "pies apple" and anyone with any brain will know that people are not typing in the exact amount of searches for this combination as they are for apple pies. I have found other examples of combinations that no way in heaven or hell are people typing in those exact words as google presents them. But the results of searches they give you look hopeful for the aspiring internet marketer. But you need more than hope and happiness to make money.

But when you look at the results of Word Tracker and Trellian key word finders you get key words that make sense with search results that seem more believeable. AND the combinations of words make sense as words that people are typing into the search engines.

For the sake of not wasting my time, can someone here give me a way to use Google, Word Tracker, and Trellian together some way to find the most accurate key word combinations and search count numbers?

Thanks,

#accurate #finding #google #keywords #tool #tracker #word

mald

16 years ago

Hi Dave,

I'm Mal, and I work for Wordtracker Customer Support. Sorry it's taken me a little while to get to this. You're not alone in trying to consolidate results from different keyword research tools, and to be honest, it's not an easy job as all tools have their own datasets.

I can't really talk about Trellian's results as I'm not nearly as familiar with their tool, but when comparing Google and Wordtracker's results, you'll nearly always find disparity. A few things to consider are:

Wordtracker's data represents just under 1% of US search for the last 365 days and is updated daily. The only treatment the data gets is a ten-stage filtering process to remove bot searches and spam, so the numbers you see are raw numbers, and the search text isn't altered in any way - every search you see has been typed in by a real person.

Google, to date, hasn't released information about the size of its dataset or the (obvious) extrapolation applied to its numbers. If you're looking for direct comparison, as I say this is hard to reconcile, but be sure to set the match type to 'Exact', otherwise your research on 'apple pie' is going to contain data from searches containing 'apple' and 'pie' but not necessarily both.

One of the main advantages that Wordtracker is going to give you is that it will provide up to 1000 results (rather than Google's 200), which gives you much better access to long tail keywords, which as many SEOs agree, can be invaluable in terms of attracting search traffic.

I hope this is of some help, but do let us know if you have any other questions.

All the best,

Mal

Thanks
2 replies

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theemperor

16 years ago

I would be interested in seeing more replies to Dave's question - I am also considering purchasing wordtracker, and the price is very reasonable IF the results will help me drive traffic to my site.

So is there any anecdotal experience about Wordtracker VS. Google.

And also I am interested in a tool that could pull data from wordtracker and google and show it side-by-side.

Or if a lot of people want one I could write one and sell it as a WSO

Thanks
1 reply

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mald

16 years ago

Hi Emperor,

If you're looking for anecdotal evidence, then perhaps this independent article by Rosalind Gardner may help:

[It seems I can't post links at the moment, but if you do a search on 'Rosalind Gardner Google vs Wordtracker', you'll find the article I'm referring to.]

I'd say that the best way to assess what Wordtracker can do for you now would be to take our 7 day trial, which gives full access to the tools and data - the dataset in the subscription tool is larger than the free tools (although this is being brought into line in the near future).

Do give us a shout if you have any other specific questions.

All the best,

Mal

Thanks
2 replies

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Strangler 16 years ago

Originally Posted by mald

If you're looking for anecdotal evidence, then perhaps this independent article by Rosalind Gardner may help

Are you suggesting that you have no affiliate relationship with Ros? The links to your product on her site are cloaked and this was your recommendation as a representative of the company so I'd like to know.
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- 1 reply
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- WorldAmbassador 16 years ago
  
  mald:
  
  Could you answer his question?
  
  Also anyone else have any feedback on your keyword research experiences using different tools?
  
  Thanks
  
  1 reply
  
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  mald 16 years ago
  
  Hi Strangler and Worldambassador,
  
  sorry not to have got back to you sooner, I'm currently enjoying the flight disruption from the south of Spain... anyway, here's my response, I hope it's helpful.
  
  It's not possible for me to discuss whether someone is or is not an affiliate of Wordtracker, but I can say this:
  
  The article I referred to was neither commissioned, requested or paid for by Wordtracker. I learned of it by a Google alert, and I have referred a few people to it when they've asked about disparity between the Google tool and Wordtracker, as it gives a clear view of the issues here.
  
  The information given in this article, while it does portray Wordtracker in a positive light, also gives a good outline of Ros's own process, it does refer to tools which are now deprecated (although the principles remain the same).
  
  My mention of this article was for information purposes rather than promotional - and I would expect that any bias would be taken into consideration with the factual information presented there.
  
  I hope this gives some clarification, but I've got notifications to this thread switched on, so if anyone has any other questions, please do post and I'll get back to you.
  
  all the best,
  
  Mal
  
  Thanks
  
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WorldAmbassador

16 years ago

Originally Posted by mald

That article was written before Google created their latest sensation:

Google now somewhat controls the keyword selection of people by causing a fly out window to appear when you start typing in words into the search box field. So let us say that Word Tracker gave you the key word "holistic medicine" as having a lot of searches and you went to google and typed in holistic. Then the fly out window appears showing you a list of key words and the first one at the top is "holistic remedies".... You then see that this is what you are looking for since remedies and medicine pretty much mean the same thing. So you click on holistic remedies and forget about typing in holistic medicine. Do you see what I am getting at?

Since about 70% to 80% of search engine users use google the accuracy of all key word research is now up in the air since google now somewhat controls people with that fly out window which comes up while you are typing into it.

Google is excellent with all their products but that is one I wish they would not have created
because it is hard for me now to bank on my key word research results and now I have to add more key words to my pages which takes more time.

I want to thank Google for their excellent products and wish them well both now and in the future. Thanks Google !!!

Thanks

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KingArthur

16 years ago

Originally Posted by mald

Hi Dave,

......Wordtracker's data represents just under 1% of US search for the last 365 days and is updated daily. The only treatment the data gets is a ten-stage filtering process to remove bot searches and spam, so the numbers you see are raw numbers, and the search text isn't altered in any way - every search you see has been typed in by a real person. ..........
All the best,

Mal

So if we see the number 800 for "apple pie" it is more like 88,000 searches in a year since as you said word tracker only gives you a number representing 1% of the searches over a year for the term you are researching?

Thanks

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franky123 16 years ago

I am using Word tracker tool to know keyword popularity. Even though Google is also provide accurate result.
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downloadvyp

16 years ago

i think that would be google

Thanks
1 reply

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zincOnline

16 years ago

You have got to remember that the Google adword tool is merely another piece to their marketing arsenal.

It is there to help to a certain extent, but it is also there to entice marketers to spend money.

Thanks
1 reply

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davejohnson333

16 years ago

I have found one or two keywords using the google tool which I am almost 97% sure were not typed in by a human being because they were so weird. Also the ones that are switched around like apple pie and pie apple which show the exact amount of key words are not accurate for the second example pie apple etc. etc. etc.

The best way to do it is to find matching exact key word phrases that show up in both google and Word Tracker and both having high searches. That way you are getting a confirmation from two sources.

Just my two cents

Mald, could you explain this more precisely? : "Word Tracker's results represent approximately just under 1% of daily searches across all search engines." Using other words and examples can you help me to grasp this statement? Thanks.

Thanks
1 reply

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palpatine

16 years ago

Originally Posted by davejohnson333

Hi Mal,

I'm curios as well.

I am currently in my 7 day trial of Wordtracker and it seems like a great tool so far.

Thanks

Thanks
1 reply

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mald 16 years ago

Hi again,

well, this one seems set to run and run!

What I said was that Wordtracker's data is just under 1% of US search - that is to say, we have just under a hundredth of US searches in our database. It's not necessarily an even split across all niches, but it's a fairly representative sample.

I hope this is a bit clearer - and Palpatine, I'm glad you're finding your 7 day trial useful - do drop us a line at support@wordtracker if you have any other specific questions.

All the best,

Mal
- Thanks
- 1 reply
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- thecableguy 16 years ago
  
  JMO but both Wordtracker and Google's tool tends to have discrepencies at times. They get their data from different sources, Wordtracker uses the metasearchengines (organic) while Google's tool is for Adwords advertisers and seems to combine both organic and Adwords searches (on both the search and content network). Wordtracker is about the same as the SEObook keyword tool and I tend to lean towards their results, but I will crosscheck them with Google as they to are sometimes way out of whack. But I tend to go with Wordtracker since it's a paid service that's been in business for about 10 years. If both are kinda close (even though Google's Adwords skew the results) then I'll go with it. That being said most keyword tools like MicroNicheFinder, MarketSamurai, etc. will use Google's results.
  
  Thanks
  
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charlyms21 16 years ago

I saw just 2 search results for a search term in wordtracker whereas google adwords keyword tool gave me 130000 searches per month.I dont know why is it like that.between I myself has searched for that keyword more than once,so I dont under stand this discrepancy.
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asbharmal Banned 16 years ago

[DELETED]

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- Ohioquotes 16 years ago
  
  Although a relative newcomer here...here's my two cents:
  
  I like Wordtracker. Some of their phrase suggestions have been very helpful.
  
  Go Flyers...Beat Boston!
  
  Thanks
  
  Signature
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alenyuli 16 years ago

for me, google keyword tool is the best
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AshtonWebb 16 years ago

You will never find 100% accurate stats when looking at keywords to start a promotion on, I use seo book kw suggestor or the google keyword tool... I usually ONLY go by any of their stats as a guide or starting point.

The best way is to grab all of the relevant KW's, and to test with paid traffic, then after that I usually take my stats and start a campaign with organic traffic like optimizing blogs for those "winning" keywords.

Depending on the CPC I will do both.

But no matter what you will always be testing and sifting through to get to the game changing primo ultra targeted traffic.

- Ashton
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jaratvit 15 years ago

Word Tracker is best till now even though Google is most successful search engine still their keyword tool is not impressive as suggested keywords give different results when searching live at Google .
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bioss 15 years ago

Google for sure...
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SoEffingOverit 15 years ago

I've just recently noticed the wild variations in the numbers from Google's AdWords tool - it offers vastly different results from one day to the next, and depending on whether you are signed in as an AdWords customer or not.

Given the above, I'm leaning towards thinking that Wordtracker would probably be an improvement on Google's tool in the US and UK search markets at least. However, I was disappointed with Mal and Wordtracker's responses to questions about data accuracy in another forum. It seems to me like they aren't 100% convinced in their own tool, and are deliberately not fronting up information about the accuracy of their data, such as the fact that the keywords and volumes offered represent less than 1% of the search market. This seems like a fairly critical factor to me, especially when they are offering 'single search' keywords within their data! Why is it not clear to everyone using the tool that this is the case? If you're buying data, you damn well better know where it's coming from. Otherwise you're an idiot.

Unfortunately Wordtracker is not really an option that's available to me anyway, as I'm only looking at the NZ search market, and there doesn't seem to be an NZ-specific tool out there, except for Google.

Hmmmm.... I think the best advice offered so far on this thread has been Daniel McGonagle's suggestion to use PPC to determine searches through impressions.
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Which is the best tool for finding accurate keywords: Google or Word Tracker?

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