Overture keyword suggestion dead wrong

Stunning discovery

[adfree]

Major two keyword phrase shows 5000 requests last month at OT. My SEO effort put me at #1 (and sub listing #2) on Google out of 8mio.

Guess what: my logs NEVER show any user using this keyword combo on any SE.

So, if OT claims 5k times the keyword combo is used, I would assume the entire web community would use that combo more often (factor 2?) across all SE's (my site is indexed by all majors). Why the heck do I not get ANY request via Google (I get nice traffic via G) with that keyword combo. I can't believe that particular combo is not used by G users. Maybe it's not used at all?

What's wrong about OT, how can I trust them ever again?

[vibgyor79]

Hmm.. Next time, run an AdWords campaign (uncheck search/content network) for a day or two and then go after the keyword.

[hobbnet]

This has been addressed many times. Overture search suggestion tool is a good guide to use but it is often times misleading and just plain off.

Stemming and other matching can really skew these numbers along with other things (that I'm not sure of). Use word tracker and google to double check expected search volumes.

[adfree]

Thanks guys, will spread it out and base it on broader ground now.

[goodroi]

Make sure to use all three. I have found that some times two out of the three were wrong.

Also another quick test is to buy the phrase with overture and adwords. If you receive traffic, you should look further. It does not guarantee that the search phrase is good because as previously stated they could be using stemming and matching.