How to determine how many searches a keyword receives

[tama]

Overture and Wordtracker publish how many searches a particular keyword receives per month. Is there any way of determining this with Google?

[tedster]

Not that I know of, at least not directly the way Overture shares their data. You can use the AdWords "Traffic Estimator" to get a rough idea, but I haven't found it to be more than a rough ballpark anyway.

[sem_scotty]

i use the overture tool to estimate google traffic.

according to my experiences, google gets ~83% (conservatively) more traffic than yahoo. so, to project google traffic using the overture tool, apply that weight towards the results the overture tool gives you.

ex:
9,638 searches for "widget" in december 2005 via yahoo

so...

(9,638) * (1.83) = 17,747

17,747 searches for "widget" in december 2005 via google.

anyboy else, please feel free to jump in here.

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and apply it using the following weights for each SE:

[sem_scotty]

Google - 55% of all SE traffic
Yahoo - 30% of all SE traffic
MSN - 10% of all SE traffic
Others - remaining 5% of all SE traffic

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[wfernley]

I'm not sure if this is a good tool to use for traffic estimation, but I use the tool in Google Adwords. I think its called Traffic Estimator.

You can type in a word and it tells you how many impressions you will get with that keyword a day.

Just an idea :)

[sem_scotty]

the adwords estimator is misleading when used for SEO - it shows estimated traffic based on clicks for paid ads, which is not representative of the amount of total traffic for any given word.

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[followgreg]

In my experience the Overture tool is a total scam :)

It shows numbers inflated sometimes by X 10

Not to contradict you sem_scotty just that the official market share you are giving is also usually not what the log files have to say even though maybe...throughout all industries?

[mirrornl]

when we would have such a tool....
its quite an essential question

[annej]

All I've found is the tools mentioned here. They can give you a general idea but that's all.

Also consider that the top search words or short phrases may be very competitive. I then look at longer word phrases that are used a lot. Phrases that I have a chance to get up there in the serps. Of course I hope to get up there on the shorter ones eventually.