2nd tier ppc says millions more searches than overture? - craziness

[scattdaddy21]

I'm new to the ppc world, so what is the catch here that i'm missing? (this isn't a slam on any ppc, i honestly don't understand this discrepancy that is surely not possible).

Below from the ah-ha/enhance account manager screen:

"Click here to see the 25 most searched-for keywords on our networks from December 2003.
TOP 25 KEYWORDS - DECEMBER 2003

Results:

Keyword
Queries

travel
16,418,661
music
13,209,073
games
11,475,106
home business
8,866,406
las vegas
8,403,594
web hosting
7,767,677
s*e*x
7,630,778
holiday
4,789,046
dvd rental
4,530,064
hair loss
4,512,438
====================

ok, those are the top 10 out of enhance's top 25 searches for december. but when i went to overture's search term suggestion tool and searched for web hosting, the total number of searches that contain "hosting" add up to somewhere around 3,000,000 or 3,500,000 for december.

enhance/ahha = 7,700,000
overture = 3,000,000

the other terms are similar in that ahha shows millions more searches than overture.

since there is no way that ahha is blowing away overture - what's the deal with these crazy numbers?

thanks for your help,
matthew

[seth_wilde]

either they're inflating the numbers themselves or they get a lot of bot traffic.. I wouldn't trust any keyword suggestion tool to give real accurate numbers..

[eWhisper]

If you consider that the OV numbers are totals for that word variation, and not an exact number match, their numbers and my monthly traffic do come fairly close to each other.

The other numbers seem inflated, but then, I had a month once where I received more traffic from Ah-ha than G. 3/4ths of those 'visitors' stayed under 5 seconds however...

Be careful advertising with any PPC.