How much to expect?

[taj79]

Wordtracker free trial shows that for the key word
oil paintings
search has been done 702 times in last 60 days.
Can any one tell me how much can be expected from Google and MSN individually for the keyword oil paintings?

[Marketing Guy]

Depends on the competition.

Im gonna assume you are optimising for that phrase and not just hoping for traffic from it! ;)

Scott

[Brett_Tabke]

Very little correlation. I wonder where WT is suppose to be getting their results these days since WebCrawler slammed the back door.

[lazerzubb]

<sidebar>
BT from their website.
From their website they state

Data is collected from several of the largest metacrawlers (these are engines that query the main search engines simultaneously) on the internet.

They can't disclose the names due to the contracts though.

[Marketing Guy]

I suppose even if the statistics are inaccurate, then they will all be inaccurate by roughly the same degree.

So rather than giving you an idea of what traffic you might get, you will get an idea of the keywords that might reap better benefits.

Still not an exact science though! :)

Scott

[mfishy]

I find that the Adwords traffic estimator can be somewhat useful. It helps most if you know the traffic certain terms receive so you can use it as a relative comparison tool.

Also, I find that you can typically expect 7-10x the clicks that they predict if you land in the top 5 for Google search results and about 3-5x if you land 5-10.

[fatpeter]

"Also, I find that you can typically expect 7-10x the clicks that they predict if you land in the top 5 for Google search results and about 3-5x if you land 5-10."

I have a group of 6 adwords for experiment the last 2 weeks and have not found that to be the case. Very niche with results around 26000 and estimated 2-4clicks a day each. I'm in the top 10 for all, number 1 and 2 for one of them and 4 and 5 for 2 more and I get about 3 visits a day from them without the adwords running.

Maybe my title needs a bit of work! :)

[stlouislouis]

Question for Brett or anyone else who knows the answer:

Brett stated above that "I wonder where WT is suppose to be
getting their results these days since WebCrawler slammed
the back door."

What's the scoop on this? Does WT no longer get "fresh
results"?

Moreover, is WT still worth using and paying for? If not,
what are the best current tools/sources for researching
and selecting keywords?

Thank you,

Louis

[Yidaki]

stlouislouis, i find google's adword tool the best.

Simple reasons:

- you know the source
- 150 Mio searches / day
- biggest player / market reach
- it's free (as long as you don't buy a campaign)
- you can set up test ads and run them with different keywords, time frames etc. This way you'll also get a nice impression of the click through for various keywords.

Problem:
- you'll probably spend a lot for all this nice adwords cause it's so easy to set them up ... allthough you prob just wanted to use the keyword suggestion tool ... ;)

[stlouislouis]

Thank you, Yidaki! Will definitely try Adwords.

I also want to learn about and try out whatever the other
best or leading keyword research tools are, as I am new at
this.

I was going to try WT also. Brett's post made me wonder
if WT was no longer worthwhile to use.

Anyone know the scoop or just have an opinion on WT's value
for doing keyword research for new site planning?

Thanks again,

Louis

[taj79]

Apart from WT and google adwords what are the other reliable keyword tools?

[skibum]

Only other thing i know of is Overture tool. Match driver has made that a pain in the @$$ to use now. Other than that, logs and referral data.

Trusted Feed Programs (if you have a big enough site and can splurge for .25/click) can be a great source of keyword research. You just throw a data feed out there for a few hundred or thousand pages, see what happens, add the good keywords to Overture/AdWords. Identify the pages that suck, throw some new data out there and repeat.

Same process as optimizing a site but when you don't have to change the site or worry about maintaining a cloaking system it's so much faster and easier. :) Of course that's basically just pulling on MSN (for lots of markets anyway) even if you setup in FAST, AV and Ask as well.

[Brett_Tabke]

>What's the scoop on this?

Webcrawler left their "search tracker" log file open for 4 years. It was a bare raw flat file of the last 2k search done on WC. When Excite and WC switched last year, WC finally figured it out and close the door on that file.

That was where every keyword word site was getting data from. Aside from the microscopic and "loaded" data of the search spys, it was the only public one I know of available.

I have talked to every major search engine and asked if they would allow access to their keyword db on a commercial basis. Although they were willing to discuss it, all have said they were not interested - they will not do such contracts at any price.

Only the public Overture and AdWords system are currently the only available data.

The search spy pages at a couple of engines are such bad data and intentionally corrupted data, that they can safely be discounted out right.

So, what's that leave for live word tracking data on the net? Nothing.

In other news, I would not be surprised to see one, two, and maybe three new keyword reporting systems available this year from major search engines ;-) (heard it here first ;)

[note: bookmark]

[stlouislouis]

Thank you Brett! Really appreciate the info!

Take care,

Louis

[Fiver_321]

Brett,

Interesting last post.

I find quite a lot on the web that facilities die off very quickly indeed.

If wordtracker is no longer accurate, are they not liable for obtaining money by deception? In two forms.

a) Year long subscriptions which have been purchased are no longer viable. Therefore, the product sold is not "fit for purpose".

b) Continued claims of accurate data are untrue - if of course their source has now gone.

If their data is no longer accurate as advertised, how come their directors arent sent to prison?

Maybe they are still accurate - who knows?

In terms of accuracy, I often find phrases in the results which are absolute nonsense when compared to a sample adwords campaign to test impressions. In these cases, I have noted in the past the string in the WT database often has each of the words with uppercase letters at the start.

For example,

"Wordone Wordtwo Wordthree"

These words do not warrant a capital letter, and yet sometimes the above string far surpasses its lowercase counterpart in terms of daily searches - and an adwords campaign reveals only a small fraction of impressions against the daily searches listed by WT.

Well - there goes another hundred bucks.

Fiver

[astounded]

From reading these posts, are you saying that the Wordtracker data is no longer accurate, at last at far a getting the rough idea of the most popular keywords?

I use Wordtracker all the time. Should I now be mostly using Adwords instead - to determine the most popular keyword phrases?