Comments on: Google’s “search volume” estimates are not what you think

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 13:35:00 +0000

Hi Genevieve. Thanks for commenting – glad you enjoyed the post.

By: Genevieve

Genevieve — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:05:14 +0000

Very energetic post, I enjoyed that bit. Will there be a part 2?

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:17:20 +0000

Hi Russell;
Thanks for reading and commenting – we do appreciate it.
While you are, I believe, correct in much of what you say, we are one of those SEO Experts you refer to. And we do help people achieve higher Search Engine Result Page rankings (SERPs). We don’t just make this claim: we measure our performance and offer money-back guarantees to back it up.

Part of the miss-communication here, I think, is that you are doing this for yourself with an existing site, and can therefore do what you suggest in terms of using “live” data to compare to “guesstimates”. Many people are not in the same position. They are building their website, or renovating it to achieve better results. And its these people who need help often because they don’t know how to establish the right keyword strategy. Knowing that their entire website must be built on the right words and phrases, they hire expert help to ensure that they don’t waste time and money.

And to address your point about Google not releasing much about algorithms in a while: Google releases information on how to get better results regularly on its Webmaster Tools and its blog. You will find a great deal of helpful information here, and the company SEOMoz does some excellent research as well – their blog, and especially their “White Board Fridays” series of videos is extremely informative. I strongly suggest you check these sources out as they do help one understand the search engines latest approaches.

By: Russell Davison

Russell Davison — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 14:36:38 +0000

I agree that you should divide the results given by Google’s Keyword Tool by a factor of about 100. Even though Google says that the Global monthly volume is the “approximate 12-month average of user queries for the keyword on Google search”, it is actually consistently 100 times bigger than the figures given in Google Analytics and the analytics given by my site host.

The best thing to do is basically ignore the SEO hype that you read about keyword volumes and use raw data from your own site host and, with caution, Google Analytics. Even Google Analytics misses about 70% of my unique visitors!

I still find it amazing that the world is full of self-proclaimed SEO experts when Google haven’t released any details of their search algorithms for around a decade now. So, similar to religions, the SEO experts can say anything to anyone and no one can prove or disprove what they say. Only the guys at Google can have a real chuckle at some of the dross that you read about the importance of character spaces in meta tags, inbound link page ranks, page descriptions,… It’s the modern day equivalent of the Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:56:09 +0000

Denise; Thanks for reading and commenting!
It may be that Google is less far off than you think, because we do work for a company which also has the keywords “Environmental Equipment”. There are some links from their site to ours – so maybe – just maybe – there is a reason for you arriving on our site the way you did.

Having said that, however, I’m glad you read the post as it does highlight some important considerations in terms of search volumes for organic results versus PPC.
Good luck with it all.

By: Denise

Denise — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 20:47:34 +0000

I found your blog post because the main keywords for my industrial website are “Environmental Equipment”. Imagine my surprise to read that Google’s keyword tool is that far off! I quit advertising on Google’s Content Network long ago because those clicks do not convert to sales. I had a lot of clicks with no ROI. Thanks so very much for the very relevant information. I only wish I had seen it sooner!

By: Axel

Axel — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:08:20 +0000

I hear you Chris. Switch to using the search based keyword tool. Much more realistic. You and your clients won’t be disappointed by forecasting unrealistic organic traffic that just doesn’t materialize. And as the old saying goes, 1 hen in the hand is worth 3 in the bush.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:12:24 +0000

Im a bit dissaspointed now because i had previously estimated from google what i thought to be my potential traffic

By: Axel

Axel — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:38:51 +0000

Excellent comment, Ron!

To best answer your question, let’s take a closer look at business.com with an example. Let’s search for “marketing automation”.

The search for “marketing automation” returns 6 “featured listings”, 12 “sponsored links”, and 10 “listings”.

“Sponsored Links” are PPC ads. Pure and simple.
“Featured Listings” are listings from their PAID directory (business directory advertising)
“Listings” are also labeled “paid”, with reference to PAID directory.

By conducting this search I have just increased the July search volume for “marketing automation” by one. And yet there was never any opportunity for my search-engine-optimized, organic page to appear.

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 21:16:10 +0000

…”These properties are not available for organic search listings, only PPC listings. So why has the SEO world been using these numbers to justify SEO market opportunity?”…

When I did a search on business.com the listing had a featured list and a sponsored listing. And then would change depending on what you searched for. Sometimes I did get a web listing.

myspace.com seems to just list web listings.
nytimes just seems to list its own articles or other news blogs.

Am I doing something wrong here?

This is a great post. One of the best I have seen in a long time. Great work.