How accurate is average search volume in google keywords tool?

i tried doing a forum search on the topic but nothing came up. so sorry if this sounds redundant but is the search volume estimate in google keywords tool accurate? I ask because I started a niche blog for a keyword that google said had aprox. 1600 monthly searches. Now in a month I got the site to possition 1 in the google serps. In total probably had about 20 links, mostly from different article directories and hubpages/squidoo. Sadly google deindexed my blog but not before it sat at number one for about 2 weeks. Now thing is that in those two weeks at number one i got only one visitor from google and that was with a long tail keyword. By my estimates even if lets say 1000 people google the keyword that would be 250 a week, lets say half click on the first result and that would be 125 visitors. Yet i got 0 for the keyword. I am a bit discouraged right about now. Anyone has some experience with this?

tl;dr: I have reason to believe google keyword tool search volume aprox. is not very accurate. Anyone know different from experience?

with any free tool its not going to be super accurate, but of course gives you a idea.

try cross referencing with other tools like free wordtracker tool... even with that you need to multiply the results by 6-8x...

you can always pay for a tool to get the most accurate numbers but its not necessary with some extra work.

hope that hepls

did you use the broad, match or phrase option in your keyword research?

I receive 40% of what google estimates of searches for a keyword.I am ranked 3 though for the keyword.

Google's etimate also includes traffic from the content network. I've seen some experiments where the actual traffic recieved was everything between 5% and 30% for a first place.

i'm guessing he used broad match, i know many people who made this mistakes. Check phrase match and see the traffic counter.

Anyone care to explain what is broad match ?

Anyone care to explain what is broad match ?

Click to expand...

I second that .

the_punisher said:

I second that .

Click to expand...

Broad match:
Dog food

finds anything with this keywords alone or togheter.
So Dog shit
Sea food
all of this will come up

Phrase Match "dog food"

Will find all the sites with

Dog and food in one place.
But can find results from Food for dog

Dog does not eat his food

and so forth

Exact match [dog food]

Searches with only
dog food

Not any words in between or the words in different order.

Hope it helps.

Kandor

narutorocker said:

I receive 40% of what Google estimates of searches for a keyword.I am ranked 3 though for the keyword.

Click to expand...

there have been some studies done on this and they say that if ranked first you get aprox. 43% of traffic, second you get 13% and third you get 9% of traffic for that keyword. you can Google this "serps position and clickthroughs"

Ok for everyone else. All that broad search and exact search etc. only applies when searching on Google for something. When you look at the search volume of a keyword on Google adwords keyword tool that does not matter. You can go try it yourself. Now with that said I was able to rank first for the keyword with broad match in Google SERPS. Out of 431,000 results. (side note: i think broad match is the most important since almost nobody searched in Google for something in parenthesis or quotes.) My problem is that I never saw any traffic for the keyword in those two weeks of being ranked first. So that makes me think that the keyword tool search volume numbers are false. cguru:

klrpnda said:

nobody searched in Google for something in parenthesis or quotes

Click to expand...

not sure if ive misread your post but you do realise that phrase match and exact doesn't mean that the user is using brackets or quotes when searching, it's just to signify the different search type.


in regards to this thread;

http://www.ppcdiscussions.com/2008/07/how-accurate-is-adwords-keyword-tool.html
http://www.search-engine-war.co.uk/2008/08/google-keyword.html

Also, the figures the google tool display are groups, which is why you often see the same numbers again and again.