Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Sign up for an adwords select account, and use the keyword estimator tool to find the estimated number of clicks. If it's not an expensive keyword, then actually place an ad on the keyword and see how many impressions are produced in a day.
Note that what counts is the number of impressions, as that will be the number of times the search is performed, rather than the number of clicks, which is all the estimator will tell you. Some keywords have higher CTR than others.
If you do place an ad, and you're using it to find the number of searches, then you have to edit your campaign settings to prevent the ad being placed on the google content network. Those are adsense ads placed on other websites than google.
If you actually do want to get ad clicks and are OK paying, then you don't need to disable the content network.
I'd be happy to hear of a better way to do this, but it does give me a good idea.
I've been surprised, though, that some searches I would have thought were popular, and for which I could place an ad inexpensively so I was always #1, generated very few impressions.
