The Google Adwords Keyword Tool is roughly accurate. Google Trends and Google Insights for Search are also good tools to check out.

If your search term is getting that many approximate searches monthly and you're hardly getting any traffic in the number one position, I'd inspect your title and meta description tags carefully. Those can make or break the deal, i.e. whether a person clicks or not.

Also, try clearing your cookies and checking again to see if you're still #1.

exactly the same experience! google adwords tool is simply lying his ass off!
I am at #4 for a keyword which should have around 27k impressions for exact match.
Guess how much I get per day? 7 visitors! Adwords Tool, go to hell!

Eric, can you share the URL of your site and the search term in question so I can take a look?

OP: Go into your Google Webmaster Tools and check how many impressions you have had over the past month for that specific keyword. I have been doing this for all of my sites that lie in prominent positions and have been noticing huge differences between keyword impressions vs the expected volume from the Keyword Tool. So yes I do think they greatly inflate the numbers.

Hi Eric, it is just when an impression is made when you are in the top 10. What you can do is change the date to show just the past week and then just times that by 4. Some of the numbers have been way out when I have checked and I know that I have been ranking high. To make sure I log out and have opted out of personalised search, as well as checking rankings on a proxy. Nothing can explain the big gulf in numbers that they inflate. One minor thing is that the Keyword Tool also includes the searches taken for websites using a search engine "powered by Google", but this still shouldn't make a huge difference.

i say this over and over again all of google tools are graceless
you can't rely on google tools to make money on the web

Sometimes the keyword tool under-estimates and sometimes it over-estimates. Never rely on it as the sole reason for building a website.

It should be used to show which keywords "may" have potential. Its not for sure. And also, do consider that you are not the only one on the first page of google. So if you are on page one, ranking 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, you will only get a fraction of the clicks yourway.

I calculate, 30% of clicks go to the #1 spot.

Lucid, well it looks like I have a little testing to do. I do have the .... at the end of my title and description tag which I heard produces a worst click thru rate. So maybe I'll make a quick adjustment and see if traffic increases.

You maybe right that the keyword tool is correct, but I still think it might get some keywords completely wrong. Even the Google Traffic Estimator Tool says adwords only get about 18 clicks per day. So where is all the traffic going.

Could it be equally going to every listing (paid and free) on the page? If so, that makes more sense since their is 20 listings on the page including paid. 330 searches/20 listings=16.5 per day

Or do you think that google is altering the first place listing and testing before it leaves it onto the first spot full time? That might be something to think about.

Thanks for all your discussions and sorry for babbling too much. I enjoy discussions like this and just want to figure out what the deal is.
-Eric

Use theSearch Based Keyword Tool and you will get a totally different number than the AdSense tool. I think the SBKT is more accurate, but I think they are both lying. Try it out and see for yourself.

Search-based keyword tool

Here is a tip: Find your top search value keywords in the Adsense tool snd then go to the SBKT and put them all in to search for. This should give you a very good lilst to work with. A tip I picked up from Sean Donahue. Hope he doesn't mind me sharing it. If you want to see the whole video about it, see his Firestorm WSO for the free videos. http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-...rch-terms.html

Eric,

You aren't going to get any better information as all the paid tools pull their data from Google etc. I don't know if Google is doing this on purpose or just that their process is faulty. I would be very much surprised if their process wasn't spot on as they have some brilliant people working there. But how can you say that they are feeding us bogus numbers? Something just doesn't smell right though.

The only way to know for sure is to run an AdSense test and see the number of impressions. But you have to risk cash to do it.

I was really surprised at how inaccurate the numbers must be. I registered a domain name based upon a 45000 keyword result for the sole purpose of redirecting it to one of my main sites. In fact, I registered 3 sites, although the other 2 had much smaller numbers.

At the time, I dominated page 1 of the SERP with positions 1 -3 (actually had 5 of the top 10 and another 3 on page 2). There was absolutely no traffic improvement except for a trickle of 1, 2, maybe 3 a month!

I was dumbfounded.

Now, I've let the SEO slide and the SERP is quite mixed - I figured what was the use? I mean 45000 searches bringing only 3 new visits? I didn't even bother to try to figure it out.

Since I did this, competition for the keywords has mushroomed and search results have exploded, so plenty of other IMers must have picked up on the same 45000 stat numbers.

I really question keyword analysis results and have found no real answer despite using 3 different sources. Now, I just went back and used their tool as I was posting this and it still shows 40500 global monthly searches.

So I checked - suprisingly my site is still in position 20 currently on the broad search and 1 and 2 on the phrase (neither means anything, I know) - I haven't even been working the SEO on it... maybe I should try again and try to get to the top to see once again if there is any weight to the numbers vs top position(s) bringing traffic.

But those 1st couple of months when I dominated it all... like I said, I was dumbfounded at the total lack of results.

u must had checked traffic estimator tool..its for ppc...well keyword checker tool is not that much accurate..or you must be ranked in google.com.uk or something like that...try to get rank in google.com

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> I do have the .... at the end of my title and description tag

Yes, that will have an effect.

> So where is all the traffic going.

Obviously not clicking on links. Likely because nothing compels them to click.

> Could it be equally going to every listing

That's highly unlikely. It just doesn't work that way, it's not the way that people operate.

> before it leaves it onto the first spot full time?

There is no such thing as getting the first spot and retaining it for all time.

> I think Google is altering the rankings for search results.

The search engines are getting smarter all the time. They will take your location into account as well as other data and show you a different ranking then someone in another city, state or country.

The "test mode", if there is such a thing, is the click rate of listings. Just like sponsored searches, if an organic listing doesn't get clicked on, it makes sense to show it in a lower position. Remember that Google wants the best quality.

In my opinion the Google keyword suggestion tool is often very inaccurate, even when using exact match. I have had far better results predicting how much traffic to expect from a phrase using the Google Traffic Estimator:

For me, the google keyword tool can be spotty. I created a blog with the intention of getting a piece of the 2,000 or so monthly hits according to Keyword Tool. I ended up #3 on google and only get 1 or 2 hits a month!

The key is to look at google's yearly trends. I think the short-term data can be misleading sometimes.

Most keyword tools I find are nonsense mostly. Use them to generate lists of variations and then target the ones that are lowish, dont ever take the numbers listed as anything more than a very broad guideline.

Google keyword tool was not meant for SEO but for adwords, so you are using the wrong tool to begin with. There is no tool that can tell you the traffic available for a given keyword on google.com. That data Google will never release it as it is worth trillions. Anyway, even if that tool would show the traffic on Google.com, right now with Google's new algo. it would become more useless as Google is placing a block of Adwords at the top of the organic search results. So, #1 organic before, now it is #4.