Keyword Suggestion Tool.

25 searches is equal to 1 person....right?

[Hipsoul]

I've come to this conclusion by the obscurity of terms that I've found over the years....
I mean, when you see:

"cool red widget black hummer zebra - 25"

You can pretty much be POSITIVE that 25 people around the globe did NOT search that last month...
it's also VERY unlikely that one person searched that 25 times.

(I say this because there are SO many keywords that were searched 25 times or so...
there would need to be millions of obsessive compulsive people out there, re-searching oddball keywords over and over again!).

Anyway, what's the scoop with this obvious fraud?
Why does YSM insist on showing 25 searches for every one?

And if that's the case, can we assume that this ratio continues up the ladder to the number one searched term as well!

So in their eyes 10,000 searches is actually equal to 250,000!

[zooloo]

Generally small samples are not representative.

The margin for eror will be higher for the smaller sample.

So it's may be 250,000 isn't actually that amount of unique users but it would probably be less than the 25:1 you noted.

Then again... who can tell :D

zoo

[Hipsoul]

But, what margin of error?

My tracking software doesn't lose track of uniques...why should theirs?
(...because YSM is just one big inflatable company!?!)

But seriously, I would love to hear other people's impression of this...
particularly now that "The Long Tail" is the way to play.

How can you possibly get any valuable long tail terms when the numbers are all boosted?

NOTE: YSM will NOT approve any terms that have a "zero search value" according to their system...
so you can't even develop terms based on what you "think" people would search for.

You have to develop off their stats only...
which are sparse in the first place, and what's left of the long tails are inflated!

That kinda leaves nothing...

I mean, I built a highly-targeted 5000 keyword list with Google's keyword tool and it's 90% useless on Overture...
so now I have to do it all over again, with even less options to work with.

So how do you people develop campaigns and make it work with YSM's strict rules?

[Tastatura]

Hipsoul wrote:
My tracking software doesn't lose track of uniques...why should theirs?
(...because YSM is just one big inflatable company!?!)

Maybe I am misunderstanding something here, but unless all of the visits to your site are by registered users, I really want to know how your software recognizes and distinguishes unique visitors (i.e, as you said "My tracking software doesn't lose track of uniques").
Not trying to come in and defend Overture ….

[Hipsoul]

My software uses page-tagging (1st party cookies), as well as IP logging and html load (in case cookies are blocked)...
if someone visits that actually owns a computer, the software logs them as a unique, for as long as I choose to have it remember them as unique.

When a bot visits, it's logged as a named bot (Googlebot, MSNbot, etc)...
so there's always a distinction, which I can filter in or out of my results at will.

The point was though...
bots DON'T do searches on Yahoo for "crazy zebra happy horse widgets".
One person makes that query, once.

So why does it say "25" next to it?

I mean, blantant inflating of search queries should be federally illegal...
especially when their "policy" leaves no room for alternative sources of data.

[Tastatura]

Hipsoul,
I don’t know why it says 25, and most likely neither the people on this forum – maybe try contacting Overture and see if you can get something from the “horse’s mouth” ( I wouldn’t hold my breath though).
Not to steal your thread, so I’ll keep it very brief – what your software does is tries to estimate number of unique visitors (and some sw packages might be better then the others), but it can’t know with 100% certainty that it’s a unique visitor. For example, if I search your site from home computer, and then go to work and search from that computer, your SW might, and most likely will, label this as two unique visitors, which obviously is not the case. Or even from home computer, which is on dynamic IP and with or without cookies (which I can delete) your, and other, SW packages can label me as two unique visitors, which again is not the case. List of these kind of examples can go on and on… you get the idea.
I guess this wasn’t so brief…back to why it says 25

[Hipsoul]

I understand that man...but it's apples to apples.
The few instances that can skew the stats aren't enough to worry about.

Now in Yahoo's case, sure...there's a larger margin of error.
But it still doesn't add up at the end of the day...
the search terms are way too obscure and the search attempts are way too high.

The other thing that's pinching me right now...
since Overtures Search Suggestion Tool tends to scramble the actual keywords that people type in,
it screws anyone that wants to use the long tail method of PPC.

ie) "cool t shirt" shows up as "cool shirt t"

So if your not using Broad Match to compensate for this, your not going to get ANYONE searching for "cool shirt t"...
and since Broad Match is a whore's bed of corruption these days...screwed.

But I'm gonna go as far as to assume the majority of people know this already...these YSM forums are dead.