Overture. Impressions < Suggestion Tool Total

impressions delivered by Overture 60% of searches per Suggestion Tool

[Plucky]

I've noticed that the impressions delivered by Overture for Jan 2003 (per the monthly account summary) are approx 60% of the total searches per their Suggestion tool for the same month.

Anyone know why such a large discrepancy?

I am only looking at phrases where we are number one all month i.e. total impressions should match their total searches per the Suggestion tool. Account was not offline for any part of the month.

Is their Suggestion Tool inaccurate?

Plucky

[jeremy goodrich]

Their suggestion tool is subject to the inflation of all the advertisers checking on their competition. :) And bots, etc, can make the numbers 'anything but reliable'.

Add in the mapping from plural to singular, and you have yourself some very suspect data. Best taken with a grain of salt - or perhaps a pound.

[Plucky]

Overture's explanation:
"Impressions are the number of times your search listings are actually displayed on our results page. The Search Term Suggestion Tool only reflects the number of searches done, through our Partner network, for a particular search term. Therefore, these numbers will not closely match."

My request for clarification:
"If your network records 200 hundred searches for a term and we're ranking number one should we not get 200 impressions. You might clarify what you mean by "our results page"."

And Overture's reply:
"The Search Term Suggestion Tool is updated monthly and reflects searches that were done on Overture's partner network during the last calendar month. Please note that this tool *estimates* how many times a particular search term was searched upon during the previous month, so it may not match your search results in the DirecTraffic Center? exactly."

Anyone ever see the Suggestion Tool under estimate?