Google Keyword Tool Accurate?

[sdguy]

My site ranks #1 in google for say "acme tools" and the Google Keyword Tool says that "acme tools" gets about 250K searches per month. Sounds good, but my traffic from that keyword is about 15K/month. From what I've read the #1 site for a keyword phrase can expect a little over 50% of clicks, but I'm nowhere near that. Anybody know what's going on?

[tedster]

Here's at least part of the puzzle. The Keyword tool shows SEARCH volume, not CLICK volume.

On short keywords (1 or 2 words) the difference can be as high as 40%, because it's common for people to do a short phrase search, look at those results and decide that they need to revise the query without making any click at all.

[edited by: tedster at 5:26 am (utc) on Mar 11, 2010]

[McMohan]

The default numbers shown on Google keyword tool is for Broad match. That is, if you get 250k searches for your keyphrase, it may be the total of all phrases that include "acme tools" in them. Try selecting Exact match. That may reduce your search number from 250k to say 30k.

[sdguy]

Thanks guys, the Exact match thing fixed it right up (unfortunately).