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I have searched through these forums to find my answer but all I have found is that people generally find a good value in the service they provide.
On their webpage they say:
"taken from various metacrawlers across the internet and stored in a database of over 350 million search terms"
But what does that mean? Do they have a partnership with altavista or some other search engine which allows them access to all searches made on their engine. Also, since it is a UK based business does that mean most of the keyword searches were made by UK surfers?
Thanks for any light you can shed on this before I buy a subscription.
I've found it useful over the past 1.5 years, but it's not the holy grail. They will occasionally come up with terms that don't make any sense (weird phrase that they report is searched thousands of times a day). I've purchased these phrases on ppc se's and received no clicks. I've created pages that ranked #1 for the phrase, and no clicks. So you need to take this data source, and all sources, with a grain of salt. You need to validate any strategy against the overture suggestion tool and google adwords.
Hope that helps.
It's a handy tool, but don't treat it as gospel.
I am also considering buying word tracker and also would welcome other people who have used the product to give their feedback. I believe I will buy it anyway but would like to know what I am spending my money on.
The best thing to do is take your keyword choice from a selection of places and see which ones crop up the most often.
For instance to choose mine I use.
Overture
Google Adwords suggestion tool
Wordtracker
And something a little secret to me called relevancy and competition which im sure you can figure out for yourself. With all that taken down and used you should be able to select some good choices.
but would like to know what I am spending my money on.
As far as Wordtracker is concerned, you are spending your money on their opinion of what is relevant for Yahoo or Google.
It is not.
The demographic makeup of those that search dogpile can be quite different than those that search at MSN.
I am having trouble using Google Adwords search suggestion tool...
I am assuming there is any area where it says how many times a certain term is searched for but I cannot find this.
I am now realising the tool may not be intended to tell people how many actual searches were made, but just something that tells you related search terms that are actually searched for.
Which one of these thoughts is right? Can anyone tell me how the suggestion tool on google adwords actually works?
Thanks again! :)
It is a fair ballpark... all results I halve to be a somewhat more realistic guess. But it is a good guess! nothing more.
Google is more problematic because WT assumes PPC does not exist.
In addition, the asumption the user of WT makes is that if a ranked page is at #1... and the usage of the phrase is 1000/day that #1 ranked page will get the lion share of clicks... a very bad assumption to make.
Another flaw... WT can not tell "quality of results"... e.g. webmasters query to find their own listings... this is poison to determining "qualified" terms.
Overall... a tool for appreciating potential... but truth be told -- have two client's that currently have Premium, AdWords, and rank #1 on terms with 500 - 1000 uses per day (according to WT).
Average click-through though is 50 on a good day and 10 on a bad one.
Some come in fairly accurate (but totally random in predicting "which ones").
A big difference. (Bearing in mind > my text copy could also be the problem). :)
Thus too many variables to wholeheartedly trust the figures as factual.
[edited by: fathom at 3:23 am (utc) on May 9, 2003]
I was under the impression that I was the only one around here who didn't put much stock in WT. Good to see others feel the same.
It's like any tool, it helps weed out "what NOT to waste time on" rather than what to commit to.
Hoewever, the bigger the numbers, the more reliable they become.
At the end of the day, use it as a guide, not as gospel.
you can set it up for one day/week/month/year
My interest in keywords goes back to reading a little piece on how to optimize pages for a given keyword or phrase. Searching my logs and running tests in various SEs, I noticed that while I did very well for the phrase "become a widget maker" I did not appear at all for "becoming a widget maker." So I optimized a page for "becoming a widget maker" using the techniques in the article. A few weeks later, I found that the page in question was showing up on the first page of search results for "becoming a widget maker."
In my trial of WT I came up with a keyword phrase that WT gave a KEI of 2465.333 (they say anything over 100 is good). So I have optimized a page for that phrase and uploaded it today. I'll probably wait to see what (if anything happens) before making a decision on WT.
It seems to me, based on some of the caveats raised in this thread, that WT may be most valuable as a brainsorming tool. You can optimize pages for keywords WT suggests and then test them in the real world, keeping pages that draw traffic mand deleting (or changing) ones that do not. Does anyone agree/disagree with this proposition?
One thing puzzles me: What is the value of a full-year subscription? Since the daily fee is so modest, it would seem to more economical to keep notes about various keywords you wish to explore, then block out a day and do them all at once.
Does the one-year option apply mainly to enterprises with multiple employees working on hundreds of keywords? Or is there some value to tracking keywords over time (since WT says it only tracks what's been searched for during the last month (or is it two months?).
Since the daily fee is so modest, it would seem to more economical to keep notes about various keywords you wish to explore, then block out a day and do them all at once.
Yes Many people do that. Especially if you are not launching sites weekly.
One thing puzzles me: What is the value of a full-year subscription?
Msg 15 Fathom :-
The yearly investment of $200 is worth it...
I uploaded an optimized page for the keyword phrase that WT gave a KEI of 2465.333. Before I did I checked 10 SEs for that phrase and my site didn't show up on any of them.
I uploaded the page on 5/12. Today (5/16) I checked again (not really expecting any results so soon) and for that phrase my site is #1 on Yahoo and Infoseek, #2 on Google, #3 on AOL, #4 on Netscape, #14 on Excite, and still not showing up on the others.
Now, of course, I'll have to check log files at the end of each month to see how much traffic that page gets, but so far I'm a happy camper.
This seems to indicate to me that WT can pay off. Anyone care to shoot holes in this theory?
Wordtracker has paid off for me. I recently renewed my subscription.
I only use their stats as ballpark figures - as someone else mentioned in previous post. I compare the word counts for one keyword to another to see which is more popular (according to WT).
I don't pay very much attention to their KEI values. I find that it's more important WHO your competition is rather than the NUMBER of competitors. Of course, the number of competitors is important, but if there are only 50 and they are all PR9 and highly optimized, well... you get the picture.
Beth
