Comments on: Why The Google Keyword Tool Is Useless For SEO, Even With Exact Numbers

By: Maqbool Ahmad

Maqbool Ahmad — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:01:12 +0000

I haven’t tried WordTracker’s paid for service very recently, although I did several months ago. It definitely has some features that Google’s Keyword Tool does not. It’s my opinion that adding WordTracker into the mix doesn’t hurt, if you can afford it.
I still think that the fact Google is using a much larger sample size (their own search data), from a popular search engine (Google as opposed to the ones WordTracker uses for data that no one even uses today), and does not extrapolate results makes it more accurate than WordTracker, which is not to say that Google is 100% accurate.
Like you said, the key is to look for relative trends. But there are many niche keywords and phrases that do not even appear on WordTracker, which is why I recommend it for more popular searches but not for specific ones.
Thanks for your comment, I appreciate it.
Regards,

By: Anthony Wakefield

Anthony Wakefield — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 13:32:23 +0000

A great article, covering a topic that not many people seem to know about.

I’ve found a classic example recently, for keyword research, using exact match, in my country (australia), the keyword tool reported a large number. I found this too good to be true, and it was.

I started a adwords campaign, on google search only (not network) ran it for a day, and the search impressions was around 1/10th of what the keyword tool stated.

When i enabled the search network, BANG, the impressions increased. Still nowhere near what the keyword tool reported they should be, but that could be seasonal.

The keyword tool can be used to plan SEO Campaigns… but people should know it’s NOT ALWAYS ACCURATE, as you’ve stated, it’s showing searches done via google.com and the SEARCH PARTNERS. In fact, some searches (especially buying phrases with intent) are mostly generated on the search network alone. This was the example i found.

I find it really surprising that this isn’t really spoken of. I have a tool called Market Samurai, and it USES google keyword tool data to help people plan SEO.

It’s just not reliable, but people just don’t seem to get it.

Now i know the secret sauce – use adwords to test real search impressions on promising search phrases to get the real data!

Thanks for the write up, i didn’t know what was going on until i found your post, which i then verified with my own real life testing.

Anthony.

By: Online MLM Marketing

Online MLM Marketing — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:10:44 +0000

wow that sucks! I been trying to figure out myself how to get good keyword phrases also. I know that google keyword tool is the one tool mainly used too by seo people. I’ve been trying to get my site ranked for certain keywords and your post gives me some good insight…thanks very interesting.

By: Andy

Andy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:26:12 +0000

Very useful analysis indeed. Thanks!

By: SEO Experts

SEO Experts — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:25:12 +0000

I think the tool is wildly inaccurate sometimes. For example, I just searched for london Flight & it tells me there were 2,240,000 exact searches last month – clearly there wasn’t, and the trend graph shows a sudden jump over the last 3 months.

Sometimes the numbers are realistic, sometimes they aren’t – but how do you know which is which?

By: Website Designer in Faridabad

Website Designer in Faridabad — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:39:35 +0000

Thanks a lot for the post …. was seriously thinking for workind on this keyword system …..

By: Gerry from http://www.increaseweb-sitetraffic.com

Gerry from http://www.increaseweb-sitetraffic.com — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 07:29:55 +0000

Thanks for this post – I was wondering why I was not getting anywhere with the Google keyword tool!

By: SEO Company UK

SEO Company UK — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:42:59 +0000

ok then what is the best tool for keyword research we have been using word tracker and its not showing the exact and accurate results too.

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