Can this be right?

With the G keyword tool is the number of searches it gives you the number for that exact search or the number of times that phrase is in any search

for example "to be" is searched 35 million times a month, now does that mean that "to be" is put into the search bar by it self and searched for or does that mean that every phrase with to be in it like "how to be confident" or "how to be faster" all add up to 35 million searches?

Sorry if this is a dumb question but i'm not sure and I find it hard to believe that "to be" is searched 35 million times by itself with no other words

I'm not certain but I think it is the number of times that word or phrase appears in any search so if "how to be faster" would count as a "to be" search

Jonny13131 said:

I'm not certain but I think it is the number of times that word or phrase appears in any search so if "how to be faster" would count as a "to be" search

Click to expand...

that's what I figure too. I just don't see there being that many dumb people thinking they are going to get what their looking for by typing in "to be" alone.
Kinda sux though because phrases like that would be easy to rank for i'm sure

A BELIEF (Not proven), just a personal vibe: I think their numbers are flakey... They can be used as relative indicators. Aka word1 @ 10000 and word2 @ 100000, you'll probably get 7-13 times the play out of word2 about 65% of the time.

If you use their number to project goals you might try erring on the side of caution and divide their values in half. You'll eliminate much of the random fallout that happens in their data and double the "Good News" events.

By default the view is on Broad, which does include when the keyword is used along with other words.

Change the 'Match Type' to exact, and then you will be seeing searches for just that keyword.

So the 37 million for 'to be', dops down to 40k when searching for the exact searches.


Bit more info here: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en-uk&answer=6100