Is there any what to REALLY know how many times a word gets searched?

Keyword search results - are any of them even close to exact?

[dirtyc]

Like the title says, I'm very confused about where exactly all of the keyword analysis tools on the internet (Keyword Elite, Wordtracker, Keyword Analyzer, NicheBot, etc...) ACTUALLY get their numbers.

Wordtracker says its gets its results from metacrawlers. The others don't seem to indicate where they get their numbers at all. For all the members here (especially the one's who've run PPC campaigns) - have you found the estimates given by wordtracker to be close? If not, on what scale of magnitude are they off by?

Let me throw out a theoretical here:
Suppose WT reports a keyword is searched 1,000 times. Your PPC campaign for that keyword showed 5,523 impressions on Google search. Obviously in this case the WT results would be quite a bit off. Does this happen?

Any guidance at all would be FANTASTIC. No one seems able to answer this question definitively and many list-buidling free "E-books" I've read from Keyword Tool creators ("gurus") have stated blantantly contradicting advice.....

[steveweber123]

I don't believe in any results for a specific keyword unless I see about the same results in two of the keyword tools.

This has worked well for me.