Hey there,
And welcome to another powerful and insightful edition of The Keyword Informer where we’ll be taking a look at how to really pull up your sleeves and conduct real online consumer market research the right way.
What I am going to reveal may be quite shocking to you given that I run the leading keyword research tool on the internet.
It was just a few months ago when I broke my silence in an interview with the 60 Million Dollar Man and divulged the ways to uncover a profitable and thriving marketplace and revealed an insider tool to detect depth in a marketplace that most do not even know about.
Sadly, most webmasters, newbies and online business owners approach market research (or how to find a niche) the wrong way. Today, I intend to publicly correct that situation. 
See, I receive questions all the time from our paid subscribers and newsletter subscribers asking. . .
“How do I determine if I have found a viable marketplace or know that a niche is profitable? What number should there be in the search count?” and so on.
As one of the most sought after global experts on keyword research, most people anticipate that I point them directly to a keyword tool and shoot off some count figure that is like some magical number to someone finding riches. It’s just not that way.
In fact, my answer is quite the opposite. I’ll say something like…
“No — don’t look at any search count. In fact, don’t even look to any single keyword database, tool or source to look for a profitable market. Keyword research is what you do AFTER you have confirmed that you have found a thriving marketplace through a few certain criteria that tells you sales are strong, the commerce being moved shows some stability and, yes, there may be a little stiff competition which is actually a good indication. Why get involved in a potentially shaky marketplace where not much action is happening, right?”
Now here’s the why…
Why Keyword Research Utterly Fails at Market Research
As my trusted friend and colleague, Jay Stockwell of KeywordWorkshop.com had this to say in his article entitled “Keyword Data Is Almost Always Wrong“:
You know what really frustrates me? People who talk about keyword research as if it’s an exact science. Let me give anyone who needs it a “heads up”. Keyword research is not an exact science and shouldn’t be discussed like it is. It’s more of a black art based on skewed and inaccurate datasets. As a result it’s very easy to screw up.
In fact, Jay conducted a search (as an example) of the leading keyword data companies for the phrase “fly fishing” and each of them had different opinions of which keyword phrases were the most popular. He went onto say:
Let me break it down for you. If one tool says that there are 1246 searches a month for a particular keyword, that doesn’t mean you can say that during the past month the entire World Wide Web had 1246 searches.
What this figure means is that in this particular chunk or sample of data, that keyword was found 1246 times. The only time we could ever be sure that there were 1246 would be if the sample was every single search engine on the Internet and included 100% of their search volume. No tool does this – not even close.
In fact, when you look at Comscore.com’s “December U.S. Search Engine Rankings” — it’s very clear to see where MOST of the keyword data lies. It lies with the big five search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft Sites, Time Warner (AOL) and the Ask Network (and no one currently has that data).
The current keyword databases available to the general public maybe account for 2% of the internet’s total keyword data collected. This is exactly why most services have their regular count number and then another Predicted Daily Count that predicts using a formula how many searches may occur across all search engines for a given keyword phrase. There is no way that a mere sliver or sample of data can predict what is happening on Google, MSN or Yahoo! That is why it is merely called a prediction and should be taken as such.
Furthermore, any keyword database that proclaims to know what the market share is for a given keyword phrase on Google, Yahoo! or MSN is simply giving another prediction and is as good as staring into a crystal ball. There is no way to know any sort of market share for a given keyword unless Google Yahoo or MSN either hand over their ENTIRE set of data or start their own keyword service — and I can guarantee you that won’t be happening any time soon.
This is absolutely why I cannot (in my right mind) recommend to someone that a certain search count in some keyword database would be an adequate measure to find a profitable niche or marketplace. That’s just downright absurd.
I have seen and heard in late 2007 some of these self-proclaimed gurus dispensing information about using the dying Overture keyword suggestion tool to do market research by finding at least 10,000 searches a month for a certain topic. Outlandish! Don’t worry — I’ll have my rant about that one soon enough!
Every keyword database will have a different search count number as to the popularity of a given keyword phrase. So which keyword database is right? They are all right! Each keyword database is accurate as to how many times a given keyword phrase appears in that given dataset. But it has NO relation as to what is going on with the rest of world when 98%-99% of the data is held by the Big Five search engines.
This is exactly why there has been a sudden shift in keyword research professionals relying on Google’s keyword engine that gives hints as to the relative popularity of keyword phrases on a scale of 1 to 5. Although Google does not divulge the search counts for a given keyword phrase, it is easier to trust a source of data that covers 58.4% of searches when it comes to search volume than a source of data that maybe covers 1% of the what the rest of the world is searching. Wouldn’t you agree?
[Continue reading Consumer Online Market Research and the 5 Free Powerful Ways]
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