Search Term Suggestion Tool gets numbers from just Overture searches?

[Alphawolf]

Hi all,

[inventory.overture.com...]

Does this tool pull it's data from just the Overture searches, or from thier partner sites as well?

If it is just Overture searches within a months period, then what multiple would most of you use to guess total searches across the 'net?

TIA

AW

[Shakil]

Alphawolf,

I am 99.9% sure that it is from their partners aswell as their own.

to be frank, apart from webmasters checking, and competitors clicking, your avergae Joe Public does NOT use overture.

as for numbers, I am not too good for Overture USA, but find that in the UK Google delivers about "twice" what Overture and their partners deliver.

However bear in mind that these figures will be different for every industry.

Shak

[Alphawolf]

Hmm. Would be intersted to know for sure where the results are pulled from.

I find it a useful marketing potential tool for clients to see how much interest is in their service/product.

I'll e-mail Overture and see if they'll actually reply. Don't see why their search term suggestion results should be secret.

And I wonder- if they do pull data from partners like Yahoo and MSN- are they getting just US queries or the world?

Thanks

AW

[Shakil]

hence the reason I said 99.9% because NO 1 is sure, who knows, maybe they make them up as and when they feel like it.

In my mind though, its Overture and PARTNERS.

and hey they aint telling jack, reckon its sensitive information on who exacty is their partner (obviously Domain Aggregators do not want to be mentioned)

but other than that, its a fine tool with many uses.

Shak

[hannamyluv]

I don't know where they pull from but I have found that their numbers tend to be more accurate in what I can expect from traffic than WordTracker.

[twoline]

I've asked this exact question to my sales rep at OVER in mid 2002, and the response was something like this: "Our tech guys looked into this, and no one seems to agree on where this data is being pulled from. The people who built the tool are no longer with the company, and I can't find anybody who knows the answer." He also said it wasn't meant to use for forecasting purposes, which is ridiculous, because it suggests the numbers are bogus.

I do agree with Shak that it has to include partner traffic, because consumers don't search on OVER.

The other thing that's odd is that the suggestion tool numbers don't match OVER's own monthly activity summary emails, where they send out searches and clicks for terms in your account.

The other thing to be very careful of is OVER's new practice of aggregating odd terms in with more mainstream terms. They've been doing this with plurals forever, but now they're taking terms like "Oshkosh fuzzy blue widget" and lumping it in with fuzzy blue widget.

I use the tool for directional purposes only. Very hard to forecast traffic and clicks off it.

[Alphawolf]

twoline,

Very interesting. So, OVER hasn't a clue how they get thier own data. LOL.

Intersting to know. Thanks for teh response.

AW

[Jack_Frost]

I was a very early user of Overture adn my first question to them was where do you get your search data. At the time they said that it was pulled from their whole network.

For a long time, I relied heavily on their data. Then after putting in a program for seo terms I realized that their number were completely skewed by ranking reports or bid management tools or something.

For the most part, none of this data is great and you'll find HUGE discrepencies between WordTracker and OT that just shoud not exist. To further complicate it, OT does treats plurals and singulars the same and often auto corrects mispellings making their data practically useless for predicting Google.

For me, I don't feel comfortable with the data until I can run a campaign for a couple months and get real click thru data to analyze.

Anyone heard of anything beside Wordtracker as an alternative?