Do the search engines keep track of 3 word key phrases?

[franklin dematto]

When using the standard techniques (Google adwords, goto/oncore.com) to find out how often key words are searched for, I've found that phrases with 3 or more words don't seem to come up. Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone know a work around (to find out how many searches are done for phrases with 3 or more words)?

[SmallTime]

3 word phrases come up on oveture(goto) for terms I am interested in - adwords seem to have a higher minimum reporting threshold - but I am sure other folks with more experience with them will clarify. Interesting to see what folks search for, often surprising what they don't.

[PageCount]

In scanning my searches across all engines for the month to date, I see they're sticking to a pattern they've followed through most of the year.

About 5% of searches are on single keywords, 35% are on two words (predominantly keywords), and 60% are searches on multiple words (including keywords).

Is such a breakdown par for the course? If it is the norm, it should be borne in mind that I don't pay for keywords. Deviations from this norm might then be explained by the types of search people conduct on engines such as Overture - if they are, in fact, different to those they would conduct on other engines.

Another consideration when assessing search types would be a site's subject focus.

[PageCount]

Errm... on looking back at my post I see it's actually done little to address or give a definitive answer to your question. My apologies, but I hope it serves as a starting point. I see the subject of multiple words in searches comes up at [webmasterworld.com...] Backing Brett's observation of the Google factor, I'd add - looking at engines like AV, that the shift towards themes has had a major impact on the number of multiple-word searchers pitching up at one's site. With alltheweb's new innovations coming onstream, I think themes - and therefore content - will more effectively determine site visibility in future and foster the trend towards greater clarity in search terms. I presume this should hold good for Overture as much as it would for any other engine...

[WebGuerrilla]

Getting any king of good stats on 3+ word phrases, or what I call secondary phrases, is quite tough. Most of the good ones you will come across will be found in your own log files. The major keyword tools just aren't large enough to pick them up.

The approach I usually take is to use the a keyword tool like Wordtracker or the GoTo tool([smallI refuse to call it the Overture tool![/small]) to identify top level phrases. Then, once the pages have been indexed, I regularly track all the secondary variations of my targeted term that show up in the log files.

If you get into a habit of running position reports on the phrases found in your log files rather than the phrases you want to rank for, you'll end up stumblimg upon some very high quality, and often overlooked terms.

The ones I try and keep an eye out for are the terms that show up regularly even though I'm not ranked anywhere in the top 30 for them.

If you are getting 10 visitors a day hitting your site for a term you rank 57th for, you can quite often turn those 10 visitors into 50 or 60 per day just by making a couple of adjustments to the particular entry page.