The Initial Assessment of Google Unveiling Approximate Search Counts in Google External Keyword Tool

Hi,
Interesting article. As someone who makes their bread and butter in SEO/SEM and virtual property, I find some of it a bit hard to swallow. For example, the ‘hidden data’ has always been there, and my own Keyword Cracker technique uses it extensively to isolate keyword phrases that are suitable for high earnings (CPC) or high traffic (Search Volume vs. Competition).
Also, to say that ‘keyword research is in its infancy, at best’ is possibly a little misleading. The fact is that Google, and others, will always be twisting the dials, forcing us to continually update our techniques.
In that sense, I fear that it’s never going to settle down!
Best,
Guy

Thanks Jim! You were the first one to report this. I have got several mails on this from other gurus, who were busy promoting the latest products to launch.

Hi Jim readers n posters … Google must of realized it was a door open for the other competition search engines to creep through … so they have gone back to basics and polished their mission statement brass plaques so they can see it with fresh eyes … as a reminder the plaque reads “NO EVIL” …

All my best to you and your mission statement.
Phillip Skinner

Hey Guy,

Apparently, you missed this line about the “hidden data” in the post…

“It’s not really hidden data, but there are some extra columns of data you can actually display when you use the “Choose columns to display” and choose ‘Show all.’”

… I hope the pill wasn’t too hard to swallow.

Jim

Jim, I think this is a case of viewing the Google info as just one more tool in our keyword research arsenal. This shouldn’t be seen as THE tool, although I am sure we are going to use the info a lot. Seen as part of the research package it will be invaluable, but don’t rely on this alone.

I am definately going to keep my ear to the ground on this one, something is missing in my mind.

The information now provided by google is excellent, although the data is not exact it does give an idea on what people are searching for

Thanks

Mally

Great news, although its not 100% accurate I’m looking forward to seeing how people use the data.

Mally

Yes Jim, Rightly said..

Have noticed the “hidden” column since using it and thereafter, I alway choose show all column.

Told my group of marketers about this articles..

They can read it themselves.

Hi Jim

@Mayank – Funny how no-one else, except the REAL gurus picked up on it.

Thanks a lot Jim, your feedback and take on the situation is invaluable. It will be very difficult to figure this out unless you are an expert, which is why YOU are the keyword-go-to-guy!

I’m sure this is finally going to show me which keywords to target first.

Kindest regards

Louise Fourie

[...] Jim won’t want to sing googles praises to high or we will all go with the free google option! The Initial Assessment of Google Unveiling Approximate Search Counts in Google External Keyword Tool To be honest I’m a bit confused now as to how accurate these figures are. Ed might want to jump [...]

It seems like everyone is setting to close to the fire here?

To me the apparent reason for Google’s update is:

….drum – roll please ….

$$$ MONEY $$$

Even though they are cash king on Ads, PPC revenue is seeing a
sharp decline along with the US economy and searches overall.

This simple statement: ANSWER: Google made the change in response
to advertiser (customer) feedback. The customer is GOLDEN.

GOLDEN in that – give them numbers to pop their eyes on and build
a facade of value so ads will pay more, because the ‘GOLDEN customer’
can be prepared for the competitive nature of the keywords they seek,
even with estimated guestimations(

With all the spammy sites on-line that are created by automated junk
programs, aiming at adsense money and the systematic link building
E-books selling like hot cakes, pages are going to shed rank and show
so many wasted hours, days and weeks trying to game the system.
This is needed and hopefully will reduce some of the non-sense and place
the spot lights on value packed content sites and set adjusted guidance.
Google’s market/stock position will be the stronger for making a move,
while the spammers ravage the remaining SEs for a few more years,
maybe forever!

Unfortunately, the “Google Slap” may look more like the “Google Snap”,
once they pop the personalized search out of beta. I wonder if Google
will show guidance information to web masters regarding personalized
search preferences. Let’s just say – follow the GOLD to more PPC ad
spend getting eyes to a site with relevant keywords and good
valuable/solid resourceful copy.

[...] Today I received a follow up message from Jim Morris, founder of NicheBot with his assessment of the tool. [...]

An interesting article, but ultimately we still don’t know what Google is up to.

Personally, I find it unlikely that Google will give anything away these days, without some real compensation.

Who knows, perhaps they’re softening us up to pay a huge amount to get the real data? I imagine there are plenty of people who would pay serious money to get at that.

Where do I sign up……..

this is very good information thankyou

How do you know it was “The switch was impulsive — and it was out of thin air — ”

Google could have been thinking about this for months.

As usual Great read Jim

Do you think that by making these numbers available it will in the long haul hurt google results???

I’m glad to see everyone so euphoric. I have but one question. Is this not the exact same company who gives us the PR of every site we visit?

I don’t think I need to say anymore.

Thanks for the tip about using an ‘exact’ search. I had been using broad search and couldn’t understand why the results were way over the top. The exact match seems to bring it back in line with what I expect the results to be, at least in relation to my websites keywords.

hey Jim

Love your work.

Just to clarify – my assertions were based on comparing apples with apples – broad match to broad match

You’ll also note that I used the term ” within a standard deviation”

We have now done a comparison of over 2200 phrases across dozens of niches – And the results are still within a standard deviation.

I’m also confused about the 600 number that jerry had quoted – when the data clearly shows as low as 12 searches a month?

Personally – the most exciting factor (as you mention above) is working out phrases that you are just going waste your time on.

That isworth celebrating and getting excited about!!!

Ed

I’ll defend my excitment

This is all good news, Jim. But the fact remains that using AdWords can be a bank-account-draining proposition, if you get your campaign wrong.

New advertisers in particular tend to get burnt. It’s wonderful that we’re getting these more exact figures from Google, so we can create more effective ad campaigns and rake in the profits.

But PPC is an exact science that takes time, concentration and testing before you can succeed.

Just the suggested bid for most keywords looks rather daunting to the majority of people. And with more and more marketers flooding onto the Internet, it seems that PPC prices will only continue to rise.

That’s why the free advertising alternatives to getting traffic and making money with a website are now becoming so popular.

Hey Jim,

Thanks for your candor in openly addressing this latest development from google keywords. I believe the numbers are over inflated and that being said I think that there will always be a need for a “watchdog” or tool that helps process and refine results before IMers jump in and deploy their ad budgets based on bogus info. Keep up the great work!

den

never take google at face value upon first glance. You can bet your socks that there is more to this than meets the eyeball.

My gmail theory is that google is stress testing their servers as part of their world domination plan…microsoft be damned…

So this latest move falls right inline with their ongoing program to eliminate the competition and rule the ( Internet ) world.

HeadzUp

Google…sic…Dave Guindon and see if you can scout up his secret affiliate marketing software tool online intent extractor that does the heavy lifting for the results found at http://adlab.msn.com/Online-Commercial-Intention

So now you’ve got a little system to complement your nichebot research and pretty much dominate any niche of your choice…good stuff

gourmet coffee snob
always drink better coffee

Jim.

I think the best advice about this latest change is what you stated…

Use these results to determine prioritization of your efforts.

This is all I have ever done with all of the keyword data that is available.

Steve

you talk about key words.. but what about the “phrase” in the drop down box… how does that relate to what you are talking about… I use a four word phrase when doing my marketing… so to get the proper numbers coming out of google do I use the Phrase icon…or the key word….

thank you,

darick

“No one else can tell you what keywords are going to outperform others.” – Well then, I won’t mention the site that shows commercial intent.

Chas,

If you have something helpful or useful — then please share.

Here’s what my last line read in this post:

“If you have any further data you would like to share with other users that might be helpful, please do so below.”

Either way — be well.

Jim

Thanks for the honest assessment. It’s pretty cool we can see quickly some trend data and highest traffic months. Like you’ve already said and done, comparing this with actual performance will be quite interesting.

hmm, has the tool gone down, all terms I now search for are showing ‘NO DATA’

I’m not sold on the google adsense measurements yet. I think this is biased and does not include all the traffic they are getting.
For example: I invited some friends to check my new website, still in somewhat of a beta test mode, to find out what exactly appeals to them there.
I had good and not-so-good comments but all very helpful.
One comment I got was, it seems like you have a lot of very good add links (talking about the google links on my site) and that it gave these visitors a real interest in clicking on those links. Someone one said, “I just couldn’t help it but clicked on a lot of the links on your site.”
When I looked at the logs from Google the site still shows very little in terms of clicks.
Either the testers were lying or google is ignoring those clicks. I’m putting my money on google’s dishonesty as I trust my friends to tell me exactly what they were doing – and one I actually observed while this person got carried away clicking on those google links.

Any thoughts, anyone?
thanks,
jo

Good data in the NicheBot Google View screenshot!

Even if the numbers aren’t accurate, a relative positioning of keyword popularity is good by me! It is easier to sort data in excel using real numbers rather than pictures of graphs.

Thanks for your thoughts on this new development from the Big G.

Ted

This is great news Jim. I never copuld figure out why, since they had to be collecting it, google didn’t publish this info.

By-the-way, I also commented about you site to my fellow Web2.0 Upgrade members. I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear this too.

Jim,
Here is one of the reasons why Google data is less acurate in your results, and in general:

For competitive keywords, there are many people who just check the rankings. They either just doing SEO research, or are the competition and they check THEIR rankings once a day, or even automatically – couple times a day.

Smaller search engines have a larger percentage of “real” users, who search to get data. Do you know an SEO person who doesn’t check rankings on Google? Hardly.

I think this is a huge move by google. I have thought and wondered many times what the future of wordtracker will be once google gets this new feature zeroed in.

Hey Jim readers n posters even seekers of wisdom … In an “information age,” technology cannot confer wisdom: wisdom takes more time to develop and cultivate than even knowledge does (how many people do you know with advanced degrees who lack wisdom or wise judgment?). For this reason, wisdom is at an even higher premium, perhaps, than it has ever been, and when you find a good, credible source of wisdom (a person) who can help you make good judgments and grow your own store of wisdom, that’s a relationship to build and hold firm. This is why really good mentoring is so valuable, and why the most effective executives and leaders are extremely adept at understanding other people. Wisdom combines the seasoned experience of connecting and reviewing bodies of knowledge, together with a genuine grasp of human nature and the ways of the world, to allow for the proper use of data, information and knowledge. Wise people, therefore, cultivate connections with other wise people or reliable knowledge experts, because this is the ost effective way to leverage and benefit from vast stores of knowledge in this “information age.”

All my best to you and your data
Phillip Skinner

Neels,

I think you are right — this new Google
data “shouldn’t be seen as THE tool” –
but just one thing to consider as part
of the arsenal.

Best,

Jim

Hey Lynne,

You said:

“One thing I guess is that nichebot is a paid for keyword research tool and Jim won’t want to sing googles praises to high or we will all go with the free google option!”

I honestly wish I could sing praises about the Google information and say it was accurate. I am simply just reporting the reality and truth of the situation.

Simply put, if the Google data were accurate and spot on — that’s how I would report it. NicheBOT is unbiased and as you can see — we already have an import tool that brings this data into the NicheBOT environment.

Even if the data was accurate, the fact is — while the External Keyword tool is great for preliminary keyword research, the data has to be exported and manipulated in spreadsheets and not imported into a database environment that allows for processing large keyword lists, heavy filtering by count and such — all of which NicheBOT does.

I appreciate your spin and perspective on the situation, but I have no bias about the data. NicheBOT has and always will be a neutral party since it carries data from WordTracker, Google, Yahoo and Keyword Discovery.

Nonetheless, I appreciate your thoughts.

Best,

Jim

David,

You said:

“How do you know it was “The switch was impulsive — and it was out of thin air — Google could have been thinking about this for months.”

As far as us webmasters and online business owners are concerned, the switch was impulsive and totally out of left field.

No one would have guessed that they would have released it.

I’m certain that not only was Google planning this for months, but there had to be some serious effort involved in making this happen.

Best,

Jim

Uri,

As long as Google continues to refine their numbers and estimations and people just view these new results as a way to prioritize the popularity of keywords, I do not believe this move will hurt Google results.

I believe this move will actually inspire advertisers to do more business with Google now that there seems to be more specific volume counts.

I also believe that this will set a trend for other major players like MSN and Yahoo to show their numbers. I believe this was the direction the other two were going — but Google headed them off at the pass.

Best,

Jim

Hey Ed,

Thanks for coming here to clarify.

You said that you are comparing broad match
to broad match.

Does this mean you are not comparing results
from organic search rankings with the numbers?

I believe Jerry is comparing organic search
rankings with Google’s numbers as am I.

It sounds like you are referring to cross-
checking Google’s broad match numbers to
traffic received from Adwords on broad
match terms.

Am I correct in my hunch?

Please clarify further.

I, too, was also a little stumped about
Jerry’s 600 number since I saw some tail
terms that come in with rather low counts.

Either way — I’ll definitely agree that
this is EXCITING news as well that Google
released the numbers — and I believe it’s
a step in the right direction for the
entire industry.

Best,

Jim

Widget Woman,

I’ll agree that PPC can be a bank
draining proposition.

That’s why I recently did an interview
with a PPC expert to correct the
situation at:

http://www.nichebot.com/ppc.html

If PPC advertisers would only under-
stand the importance of going after
buying terms — things would be much
more profitable. (See URL above).

Best,

Jim

Darick,

You said:

you talk about key words.. but what about the “phrase” in the drop down box… how does that relate to what you are talking about… I use a four word phrase when doing my marketing… so to get the proper numbers coming out of google do I use the Phrase icon…or the key word.

The “phrase” in the drop down box relates to “phrase matching” but it is not precise by Google’s own terms:

“Phrase Match – If you enter your keyword in quotation marks, as in “tennis shoes”, your ad will appear when a user searches on the phrase tennis shoes, in this order, and possibly with other terms in the query.

In this case, the search can also contain other terms as long as it includes the exact phrase you’ve specified. For example, your ad may appear for the queries buy tennis shoes and tennis shoes store but not shoes for tennis. ”

As you can see, in phrase match, “the search can also contain other terms” which is why you want to use EXACT match to figure out more precise totals of what kind of traffic you may receive when using Google’s estimated figures.

Best,

Jim

Milan,

You said:

“Here is one of the reasons why Google data is less acurate in your results, and in general:

Smaller search engines have a larger percentage of “real” users, who search to get data. Do you know an SEO person who doesn’t check rankings on Google? Hardly.”

I’ll have to agree with you there.

This is one thing I did not discuss in my dissertation above and that was the NOISE that search engines like Google get as a result of rank checkers, people just looking up keywords by doing research, doing competition searches and lets not forget all the desktop keyword tools that access Google.com’s index.

So yeah – you are very right about all the NOISE that is going on as it relates to Google and other large search engines.

Best,

Jim

Hey All,

And here’s the screenshot of the Google Data Import already working

within NicheBOT

You’ll notice that one column that the G tool doesn’t show for us

organic optimizers (the competition column)

Jim

It’s funny that when I first heard that the google keyword tool was going to contain estimates, I thought i would be absolutely mesmerized by it. Funny thing is now that it is live, I actually hardly use it. With some really savvy software available that does the job adequately, I am not sure that a keyword suggestion tool with approximate numbers will take on a life of it’s own

[...] stand out: Jerry west wrote “Google Updates their Keyword Tool” and Jim Morris wrote “The Initial Assessment of Google Unveiling Approximate Search Counts In Google External Keywo…. (Haha, Jim, you crack me up with your beancounter language – but that’s exactly what makes [...]

Great post, lovely!

Good move Google. Although it is important to have more than one source to research, Google services are becoming more and more useful as a keyword research tools.

I know that this thread is almost a half year old but since I was reading the latest post I just felt that I had to comment on this.

Even though we still can’t use the Google numbers as any accurate measurement it is still the best (most reliable) tool that has ever been. I agree that keyword tools still have a long way to go but with Google’s release I think we made a major step in the right direction.

Hi Jim ,

Thanx for the clear analysis of the pro’s and cons’ of using google’s revealed search counts.I find the news very simulating ,but only issue have had with google search counts -is when i try to do some research for niche keywords or keywords related to new hot trends for example “loan modification” the relevancy for this keyword result is hardly worth believing.
But If i take a rather broad keyword in the same industry “mortgage refinance” the results shown are much appropriate.

so does search counts co-related in any way with the age of any keywords or its related market.

Easy Jim,

Nice words up there, i remember when i first heard this and my reaction was the same. I just couldn’t believe that they would publish this holy grail like information – especially with overture and all. Since the release i have used this tool pretty much every week day and it has let me help a lot of clients. So its all good…

Cheers Pal,
Jon

I’m not really sure how important these numbers are as a decision making tool unless your looking at long tail keywords. The goal of most business sites is to drive higher quality traffic. If your looking at a general key term you have no idea what percentage might be your target market. Even with the long tail keywords it sketchy. Just my opinion though.

Looking at analytics after the fact will always be a greater decision making guide.