Questioning Overture Search Count

[AthlonInside]

I have keyword which rank #1 in google and overture claimed that 10,000 searches is done on last month! Hey, I get only 24 hits from google for that search term last month!

I wonder ...

[martinibuster]

How many impressions does AdWords say it delivered for that keyword? I judge by looking at both of them. Google consistently shows more impressions. I believe the Overture search counts.

[pixel_juice]

Overture combines similar (as far as it knows...) words into one term. Is there a chance they have incorporated an unexpected word that gets lots of impressions and this accounts for the difference?

[rogerd]

The counts are often inflated by repetitive automated searches. I've seen hundreds or even thousands of searches in one month for a totally unique phrase, e.g., a five word phrase with one word misspelled. In a popular keyword or phrase, there's no way of telling what the inflation factor is.

[AthlonInside]

I need to make things clearer

The search term I rank #1 is in Google free search results (not adswords)!

10,000 searches in overture
#1 when search in Google
Google send me 24 hits last month.

The question is, can overture figure be trusted? Or should we discount some from it?

[webdiversity]

It's not a question of can they be trusted. All of the figures are historical.

At the moment the Masters Golf tournament is about to get into full swing (pardon the pun).

As a result you will find that keywords relating to the golf tournament will show up on Overture at around a few hundred for last month, but I'd guarantee that today through Sunday there will be plenty more people searching for those keywords.

The other point to note is that 10,000 might sound like a lot, but if it is a competitive arena and you are bidding against say 10+ competitors you'll find that the ones below 10 will not get more than a few clicks in a month.

Typically you might find on an Overture listing that a #1 might get 5-7% of the searches as clicks, with this figure being higher for better written ads, or less competitive arenas and lower for #2 and below.

Just because a search is made doesn't mean that a click takes place.

Ultimately, your ability to interpret the data and act accordingly will be the telling factor, if your doing PPC it doesn't matter if the numbers are all wrong, if you get a lot less traffic you pay less.

[skibum]

In some cases, particularly for keywords related to anythig search engine, pay per click, or Internet marketing the Overture figures are waaaaaaaaaayyyy off, inflated by WPG and other automated query tools.

Just topped MSN for a few such terms where OV shows at least 35,000 searches/month. The site is getting about 15 referrals/day and that includes lots from MSNs around the world.

Other terms where OV shows about 1000 searches/month for a given keyword yield 5/day from MSN for a site with lower rankings.

[Marcia]

From what I've seen, actual clicks is a tiny fraction of what Overture figures are. Their figures are probably best used in a relative sense. If something shows double the number than something else it's better by comparison, thought he actual figures themselves mean little.

[TimmyMagic]

i have been with overture for a few weeks now. i recently added some new search terms. i just checked how they have done over the past week, and one of them says it had 2 clicks, and the % click through was 200%? How can it be 200%. What's going on?

[AthlonInside]

skibum,

I agree with you. Overture search count has been manipulated by automated queries.

10,000 searches -> a competitive word -> Lots of automated queries -> 24/clicks whole month
500 searches -> not competitive word -> less/none automated queries -> 3 clicks a day!

So does this means word tracker is a lot better and accurate then overture? How about 7 search?

[pixel_juice]

Wordtracker has always been much more accurate than Overture. 7 search doesn't have enough queries to have meaningful data, and this also applies to most of the other similar tools.