Google Trends - how accurate is it?

[Whitey]

Lately i've been using Google Trends to determin the most popular keywords for traffic in our sector, with a particular emphasis on singular versus plural.

G Trends shows singular to be more widely used than plural, in our sector. But when i check our log stats over a broad range of phrases , equally ranked , it's the other way around. When i check where our competitors are putting their emphasis, it's on plural phrases.

This has me wondering how much these stats can be relied on. Any thoughts or similar experiences?

[tedster]

I've noticed the same thing when comparing singular and plural keywords - that data I don't trust. I do see results on other kinds of spelling variants that line up with server log data that I have.

The seasonal blips and dips through the years are more accurate from what I see, as well as being the actual intent of the tool.

[Whitey]

Hmmm .... i thought it might be some confusion in their data dictionary with matching phrases [ or perhaps something to do with combining them ] , so i just did a check on a common mispelling versus the correct spelling, and indeed this lines up correctly with our logs.

It would be good to hear from others. Here's the link in case some folks aren't aware of it: [google.com...]

[lty83]

I've noticed some interesting things, maybe i am wrong, but i'm not sure how accurate it is....

Take my case for example..

I rank #6 for two keywords, for example

widget and widget tips

while widget is "SAID" to get at least 10x as many hits as widget tips i've found it to be the exact opposite, both rankings are in position 6 and the widget tips phrase generates about 3 to 4 times as many hits as the plain generic widget phrase.

Not sure if this helps at all, but i've kind of stopped taking those keyword phrase search count per month tools and trends 100% seriously, just because of the very differing results i've seen personally, maybe I will see more from my generic widget phrase than my widget tips phrase when they hit the top 3 - I will you keep you updated.

[ALbino]

If you think about it "widget" is part of "widgets" and so in theory it could get counted as a hit twice.