Makaveli2007 - 10:26 pm on Aug 11, 2008 (gmt 0)

The problem with this is, that if I go by the keyword discovery and the wordtracker tool the overall estimated searchers for all keywords would be 10,000 per month. Considering I cant rank #1 for any of them, that'd probably leave me with multiple hundred maybe over thousand actual searchers in the end.

if I go by Google's kw tool then I could expect something like 80-100,000 searches/month.

I know that aaron wall said on his blog that the volumes seemed to be fairly accurate and that they were only a bit off for some terms (I assume he made those statements relative to what we're used when it comes to a kw tool's accuracy - a bit off meaning more than a few percent off, but still in the same ballpark).

Ive seen other blogs that did tests on this where the volumes were never really off by more than plus/minus 100% (something I could live with easily). I also remember seeing one blog that said those numbers were only good for PPC not for organic search and mentioned his negative experiences with g's keyword data from the past, but his arguments looked more like he was biased or trying to come up with a contrary opinion to draw some attention/links...

So Im kind of willing to go with g's data here.

The advice of only using kw tools as relative volumes, I think, is a sound one, but when you decide whether youre going to enter a niche or if this niche is too small, then using them as absolutely nothing but relative volumes obviously isnt a big help.

My site is on a particular topic for learners of a certain language (say "spanish medical terms/vocabulary/..." but with a broader audience than that (I think significantly broader))...so Im trying to use common sense, too and figuring out how many people might actually end up typing something into a search engine...not sure if this is really helpful in this case, though unfortunately, because its only a vague estimation, too (thus doesnt help me decide whether 80,000 as shown by google would be the ballpark or whether 10,000 would be closer as its really hard to tell using common sense, too).

Ill also ask people I know what theyd type in to search for this kind of stuff and will check my log files/analytics software, etc. but right now its all about deciding whether I should 'enter' that niche in the first place.

Also trying to keep the option to broaden the site's theme if the niche turns out to be too small without losing link authority (though Ill 'lose' anchor text).

SO........what would you guys do? Would it make sense that the real volumes are like eightfold or so of what Wordtracker is showing? Id say people using meta search engines are probably somewhat tech-savy people in general, whereas somebody looking to learn a language is probably a LOT more likely to do a search on Google - but then again, I would say this should be the case for ANY (non-tech) topic.

I mean who uses meta search engines these days? I bet most people I know haven't even heard of a meta search engine, nor used one, and I bet it would be hard for me to find somebody (who's a non-tech-guy) that is actually using a meta search engine REGULARLY. I mean seriously, isnt an extrapolation from that kind of data bound to be way too low every single time if youre dealing with a non-tech-topic (or does WT try to take this into account (I heard/read they dont))?

Still havent been able to figure out where KW discovery really gets their data from, I only read on their homepage that they get it from all the major search engines w/o disclosing their actual method (or Im just too silly to find it).

..thanks for reading this long piece of crap..ehh text :-)

EDIT: just found the page on the kd site where they explain how they collect their data. Unfortunately, that kind of explanation isn't very useful as it doesn't really break it down. Ironically in their comparison to the adwords tool the kd-tool gets a lot more results than the adwords tool..the complete opposite of my current situation lol.

[edited by: Makaveli2007 at 10:47 pm (utc) on Aug. 11, 2008]