I'm researching "Easy Rider"...
obviously this has a reasonable search volume.
Adwords Keyword Tool says it's has ZERO searches,
yet the term "rider easy" gets a whopping THREE!
C'mon...that's just absolute garbage.
It's so completely wrong and insultingly crooked,
I can't take ANY of their results as even remotely factual anymore.
The worst part tho...
since it gets no searches, it gets rated with a low quality score and I have to pay big bucks for it!
How convenient.
I'd be interested to know what kind of parameters you provided the Traffic Estimator. I checked an estimate for the 'easy rider' term and got the kind of figures I'd expect targeting English speakers in the US with a $0.25 maximum CPC bid. 21 - 28 clicks, $0.09 - $0.22 actual CPC ... pretty decent.
AWA2
"Keyword Tool > Keyword Variations > Easy Rider > Global Search Volume Trends > Download .csv file"
In that CSV file you get the top bid prices for each month of the last year, and search volume figures...
the search figures are just plain wrong. (The bids look to be about what I would expect though, for the true search volume.)
The "Keyword Popularity > Advertiser Competition" is usually way off as well...this was actually the first one I noticed.
It shows major competition on certain keywords when there's absolutely none on the actual search page, vice versa. Sometimes.
I've used Adwords for about 4 years now and that tools has always been suspicious in it's estimates.
You could tell because it would say one thing in the sandbox, then two seconds later as your ad goes live it's completely different, not even close.
As well, the traffic estimates were almost always based on below zero figures for anything that doesn't get 10,000 clicks a month (hosting, insurance, etc). Unrealistic.
I've had hugely successful runs that should have completely failed according to that tool...if I listened to it, I never would have even tried.
I don't mean to be rude, but c'mon...
whatever formula is filtering that tool, it's terrible.
And now that search volume is accounted in the keyword quality score...
it's like your writing your own check off my account.
Note: I haven't tried to get this keyword approved yet...
the other part of this story I'm not mentioning is that, despite the lack of quality the keyword tool offers...
my Adwords bid prices and general account costs over the years have always been quite fair.
So this is really an argument at the tool...not at Google's ethics.
Although, if I'm told that "Easy Rider" has a low quality score due to search volume...
I may start thinking that your shareholders are dictating the company too heavily. haha!
Anyway, no sweat...I'm just disappointed.
The tool would be great if it worked.
But as it stands...
I get more relevant information from GoogleTrends on the same keyword.
