Astronomic Difference Between Keyword Research Tools. WHY?

[vusal.zeynalov]

Hi everybody!

Thanks for your answers,

Question: I have reviewed some keyword research tools, and saw a great difference between them. For example Wordtracker gives for "interesting facts" - 44077 daily searches, while Trellian's Keyword Discovery tool says that it is 114. How it can be?

We all know that no keyword research tool has accurate numbers, but why they have so big differences?

P.S. I have tested Google's keyword tool, and calculated them, the results were similar to Wordtracker's.

Thanks,
Vusal

[Logan]

I'm looking at (paid) Wordtracker and see popularity at 565. Realize these numbers are not daily searches but a guesstimate based on stats.

Regarding big differences, it is typical and there can be many reasons. I refer to it as "false data". Some reasons for example include (1) differences in where the keyword tool sources its data (2) a webmaster may be running automated ranking checks every 15 minutes on one engine which is a source of data for one tool, while not checking the engines that are a source of data for another tool. (3) The keyword tool settings may be different. For example, one tool may be nesting words together - an example is grouping searches for "interesting fact" and "interesting facts" together or keywords in any order versus exact match settings. The list goes on.

Here is how try and address your scenario so I am not wasting my time optimizing for keywords that are not popular. I use the keyword tools as a directional statistic which leads me to narrow down a list of keywords that may be more popular than others. I then run an adwords campaign for a set of keywords. I set the campaign to United States, google search only and use [exact match keyword] settings to make sure i'm only getting search traffic for the exact keyword in question. I also set the bid level and budget to try and force the ad to always display on the first page when a search is completed. In this case, my primary goal is not clicks but instead to monitor the number of searches a keyword is receiving on google. I correlate the number of impressions to actual searches completed and compare to other keywords I have tested. Based on those results, I've verified the popularity of a keyword and move on to optimizing. That is how I minimize the amount of time I take optimizing for keywords that the tools are displaying false data. Use ppc to your advantage when it comes to seo, it can also be used to test keywords if they will convert well for you before you spend a lot of time optimizing, waiting for seo to take effect, etc. If a keyword is not worth it on the ppc side, is it going to be worth it from an seo standpoint?

Cheers! You're welcome

[vusal.zeynalov]

Yes, but is only for exact match phrase.

Usually I dont prefer to use the exact match keywords, because, for example, when I will optimize my page for "interesting facts" , my page will be found for the general searches related to this keyword (in this situation ~ 44500 searches daily not ~565) as well, if the page is well optimized than others. (competitors)

For example when someone will search "interesting facts about SearchEngineGuide writers" my optimized page will be in results. Therefore the general search number (~44500) must be considered when choosing the keywords for optimizing, imo.

Thanks for your help.

-- Vusal

[geyser]

lets just say that keyword tool provider base their results on estimates and not the accurate ones so it is easy for them to make mistakes specially those sites that isn't eligible enough.

[Jack16]

Every keyword tool shows approximate search results and won't give exact results. When compared to other keyword tools this may be a bit different but overall results will be same.