Google reveals their search volume data… FINALLY!
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Seemingly out of thin air Google has decided to reveal their search volume data to the public. I don’t know about you but I am very excited about this. No more guessing or using highly inaccurate tools such as overture yahoo keyword tool. Over and over I hear common, everyday people say “Google it!” and I think this new revealing of google search data proves that is exactly what we do. Just for illustration purposes I want to show you just how radically different Googles actual search volume is compared to Yahoo or MSN and how this new data can help us be more accurate in how and where we compete in growingly competitive industry.
If you have ever wanted to know the search volume data for Google your prayers have been heard or atleast your getting your wish. You can now see the the actual search volume for any keywords in Google. I don’t know about you but this tool just went up to my number two keyword tool over night. I will explain later what tool is my number one keyword tool and exactly why.
Just for the sake of it I did a quick search on Overture for the keyword ’seo’ and here is what I got…
I am getting a search volume of about 18K queries. Keep in mind this is data gained over the past 12 months. Now take a look at the new Google released search volume data. Goto https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and enter the keyword seo… here is the results I got.
Notice the difference? Google gets 1.2 million search queries for a keyword Yahoo is only getting 20K for… that is absolutely amazing. I have seen this over and over in my rankings on Google and Yahoo… I can get 500 hits for one keyword on Google and Yahoo will send only a couple hits in a whole month.
Now that I have shown you the difference in the search volume between Google and Yahoo let me show you what this tool can really do. Okay lets start off by doing some keyword research for a laptop bag supplier which specializes in leather bags. So that appears to be our main keyword.
So lets enter that into the tool and get some suggestions.
Right away I find two additional keywords worth targeting…
leather computer bags and
leather laptop cases
In june the first keyword received 9,900 queries in Google and it averages 14,800. If you click the “Choose columns to display” dropdown menu and click “show search volume trends” it will show a graph depicting the trends… unfortunately and this is something I hope Google will rectify soon, but currently it only gives a graph bar for the trends when IMO mouseover should give a numeric value for each month depicted in the trends graph… but I can live without that for now.
What I do like about the current situation of the tool is it gives you the previous months search volume and the trend data and also the average data… this helps you to eliminate keywords which might have had a temporary spike in search volume in one month which you will likely not see again for some time. This is very important to me… another thing that I really like about this tool which really should be in ANY keyword tool is the ability to sort results by search volume or keyword in alphabetical order. But using this tool to find high traffic keywords and then comparing trend data will be highly useful to me in the coming months. I know I will be using this tool all the time!
Okay back to our results… I have compiled a list of part of the keyword suggestions google has provided, I did not bother to try and sort them or anything, I pretty much left them raw. And here it is…
Click this link for a larger image:
One thing that is interesting to me is the vast difference in the singular and plural searches for certain keywords. I have heard some seo claim that they are the same but this can be easily disproved by the fact that searches for the different versions produce totally different results(not in all cases obviously but in the case of the leather briefcase/s keyword it is)
I have taken a small list out of what google has presented in suggestions… I am using this only as a representation and not as a keyword research project for laptop bags. Again if you notice the singular and plural forms listed separately note that this is not a mistake and you as an seo should always make sure you rank for both versions.
Of course being a adwords tool it the tool gives some invaluable info on advertiser competition… if your a totally organic man(or woman) than you may feel this does not pertain to you but this can be a good indicator of the organic competition as well… keywords with low ppc competition are likely to have little organic competition as well. So keep this in mind when using this tool.
SUGGESTIONS FOR THE GOOGLE SEARCH VOLUME TOOL!!!
Okay my suggestions would be…
1.) Ability to select keywords and export only those selected keywords to csv or text file instead of having to export the whole list.
2.) The ability to delete keywords from the list which you feel are not related to your target. This could prove invaluable when creating a list of kewords to target as manually deleting later could prove a time waster.
3.) Actual search volume data in the trend graph… this can be guessed at but I always like specific and accurate data.
4.) The ability to form groups of keywords and export them together would also be nice.
These suggestions are not necessarily for Google, they are for anyone who will make a tool which queries the Google Adwords Search Volume tool.
So my overall opinion of this tool is, this is a great step in understanding the search volume of Google and the differences between that data and other engines. This can prove very valuable to you in your keyword researching. Like I said previously, this tool has now become my #2 keyword research tool. Keyword Elite is still my #1 as it is the fastest way for me to build a list of targeted keywords… however I will probably use the two tools side-by-side as they will save me countless hours and tons of money.
If you have any comments on this tool please comment. Feel free to email questions or comments regarding Keyword Elite as well.
