Best way to check searches/month?

Ive been having a look at some keywords for different towns in my area and the results are very dismal e.g. 0. Ive noticed though even for computer repair in my town it states like 0 under exact match on google keyword tool yet i get hundreds of unique hits a month (about 500) and like 5 calls and a few emails.

Can anyone tell me a better way of checking this? if not how can I explain to clients?.

Thanks

The problem with really small samples like that is exactly what you run into.

Most tools I've seen are based on Google and Google just does not display that info at that level.
I would be really interested to see a better tool that was "real" and not just hype.

thanks for the info with a bit luck someone knows.

Note that i posted this in this section as im asking for offline purposes for small things offline and the other sections may not be suitable as they are typically for bigger things.

Well, Google is known for the issue of showing different results on certain occasions but that one you are talking about, I've never heard of. Do you have the right country selected? It may show up as 0 in local results if you choose another country but the amount of total searches would still show up in Global Searches.

Junkfood00 said:

Well, Google is known for the issue of showing different results on certain occasions but that one you are talking about, I've never heard of. Do you have the right country selected? It may show up as 0 in local results if you choose another country but the amount of total searches would still show up in Global Searches.

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Yes country selection is very important.
I had the same problem as you did, local targeted keywords with unde 1000 searches/mo were listed with 0.
Try a different keyword tool... Also if you have a little experience in SEO, and if you know that your service/product is requested locally, go with your guts and promote it anyway.
Best of luck to you... Cheers mate!