How many searches are there on a keyword, really?

Translating Wordtracker or Overture numbers to real numbers

[zomega42]

I would love to know the clickthrough rate of my natural listings in Google. Is there any way to take the number of searches performed on my keyword from Overture or Wordtracker and turn this into a reliable estimate of how many people search that keyword on Google?

[chrisnrae]

If you can afford it, take the keyword(s) and get yourself first page for it via a campaign in Adwords limiting your campaign to google and not through their entire search network. It will show you the daily impressions upon the search terms you bid for - if your ad is first page and your listing is first page, this will give you what is probably the most accurate figure you could get.

[Lord Majestic]

There is one company that provides intel using log files from select ISPs (supposedly representative sample), they recently started offering search keywords that people actually used. I have not seen the list, but in my view this should be by far more accurate than anything else apart from search engines themselves.

One problem - that company wants a lot of money for this kind of information.

[SEOMike]

One problem - that company wants a lot of money for this kind of information.

I've heard the same thing and that it's quite an investment.

Here's how I get my idea of search traffic on Google. I use Overture's numbers and then multiply by about 1.102. The Yahoo network has about 26.6% share of searches, and the Google network has about 36.8%. I multiply by that to increase the searches by about 10.2 percent in order to see what Google Network's share is. To get exact GOOGLE only traffic, I would probably use the adsense method too, but it's time consuming and potentially very expensive.

[Lord Majestic]

I've heard the same thing and that it's quite an investment.

Its not cheap (~5 digits per annum), but it should be cost effective for a SEO company with lots of clients to own full license and use this information to optimise sites of its clients. Personally I am suprised that H.....e does not sell on the cheap this information to SEO types on per domain basis for a few hundred bucks. I will ask them this question next time I see them (soon).

[bmcgee]

SEOMike, don't you want to multiply by 1.38? According to your stats, Google is 38% more traffic than Overture, not 10%.