Keyword tools: why the disparity?

7 replies
  • SEO
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I`m looking at the free version of wordtracker and the adwords tools.

For keyword x...I get 740 daily searches on adwords and for the same exact work (broad match) wordtracker shows 5 daily searches.

Thats a big difference. I could potentially look at another tool but if it tells me 300 daily searches I still dont know what conclusion to draw.

Why is there a big difference and what are the pro`s doing? I would hate to spend my time optimizing my site for a keyword that wasn`t worth it.
#disparity #keyword #tools
  • Profile picture of the author todd40fla
    sarafina

    i posted the exact same thing about 30 minutes before you wrote this.

    i want to do some article marketing for some clickbank products and am looking for a keyword i can quickly move up in google for if i provide some backlinks to my articles.

    don't want to spend time writing articles and getting backlinks if no one searches for the term.

    let me give you all just one example.

    disneyworld hotels

    i realize that disneyworld is not spelled properly - it is really disney world, but google keyword tool says disneyworld hotels gets about 20k hits per month.

    wordtracker says it gets 37 hits a day, or about 1000 per month.

    so who are you supposed to believe? and as you ask how can you really determine if a keyword is worth marketing to if there is not semi-reliable accountability.

    it just makes any attempt at micro-niche marketing kinda scary.
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  • Profile picture of the author malcasid
    These keyword tools use different sources. None of them reveal where the data is coming from. I would like to hear more insights on this as well.
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  • Profile picture of the author cashcow
    IMHO, the only way to really know the volume of search for a keyword is to setup an adwords campaign for the exact match of that phrase.

    This doesn't have to cost money since you only want to be on the first page - position 8 is ideal.

    Just write an ad that hopefully won't entice people to click and let it run for 1 or 2 days. Then you can see how many people really search for the phrase by the amount of impressions.

    The other thing is that you need to know whether your tool is using exact or broad match because these two numbers can be radically different. So if one tool was using exact and the other broad that could explain the big difference.

    Lee
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    Gone Fishing
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  • Profile picture of the author todd40fla
    thanks lee

    i had been thinking about running an adwords campaign to see how many impressions it would get for a specific keyword.

    your suggestions about not necessarily ranking #1 and writing a less than enticing ad are excellent ones.
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  • Profile picture of the author Cryp
    This question seems to be a recurring one. Also asked it a while back, stick with Google's results, wordtracker gets it from them anyway.
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  • Profile picture of the author sarafina
    Great suggestion cash cow. I'll try it!
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  • Profile picture of the author p2y
    I have 3 rules when it comes to keyword research:

    1) I only use the google adwords and yahoo search marketing keyword tools, everything else seems pointless.

    2) I never assume that either one of those 2 tools will be correct

    3) Before I ever begin optimizing a site for a keyword I always run a small campaign on adwords to make sure it's really getting searched so I can be sure it's worth the trouble of optimizing for.
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