Demystifying The Radically Different Keyword Results Provided By Overture and Wordtracker, Part 1

by: Nandang S Nugraha | Total views: 28 | Word Count: 826 | View PDF | Print View

 by: Robin Nobles

...because your online success depends on getting accurate keyword counts!

The
root of all success in search engine marketing begins with keywords.
Period. Get them wrong and virtually everything about your online
endeavor will fail. Only by targeting the right keywords can one expect
to ride that exhilarating magic carpet to online prosperity.

Stating
the obvious you say? ...well, if so, then why is it that virtually
everyone - professional and amateur alike - is oblivious to the fact
they are selecting, and frequently buying, keywords based on highly
skewed numbers?

The fact is that very few online
marketers understand the results supplied by the two most basic keyword
selection tools. These are the very same tools being used globally to
hone keyword choices into supposedly laser sharp focus in an effort to
keep pace with the challenges of increasingly keen competition and
ever-rising keyword pay-per-click costs.

The critical differences — Overture's STST vs. Wordtracker's KSS

As one of Wordtracker's technical support team (http://www.wordtracker.com/moreinfo.html), one of the most frequent questions we receive these days is...

Why
are the keyword search query numbers supplied by Overture's search term
suggestion tool (STST) so incredibly different than those supplied by
Wordtracker's keyword selection service (KSS)?

Frankly,
there isn't a better search engine related question one could ask. And,
now's a good time to pay close attention because the surprising answer
will likely change forever how you evaluate keywords!

First: Understanding Their Motives.

To
help you understand the details we're about to reveal, let's examine
the motives of the services that are providing the keyword query
numbers.

Motive Analysis: Purpose

On the one hand, there's Overture's STST whose purpose is to help customers buy keywords.

On the other hand, there's Wordtracker whose purpose is to help customers select keywords.

Proposal:

Overture's STST suggests what keywords to buy from them.

Wordtracker suggests what keywords to use in your optimization efforts and/or which to buy elsewhere.

Success:

Overture's success depends on you believing there are LOTS of search queries for whatever you are selling.

Wordtracker's
success depends on you getting accurate numbers upon which you can
reliably base your optimization and keyword purchase decisions.

Profits:

Overture's STST is free. Overture profits by selling you the keywords that STST reports on.

Wordtracker's
KSS is fee based. They profit by selling you access to accurate and
impartial information. Since they don't sell the keywords, there's no
vested interest in query numbers beyond accuracy.

It's
important to note there is no good-guy, bad-guy here - just two
companies that provide information and do so with different incentives
in mind.

Second: Understanding The Artificial Skew.

In
researching the search term "keyword," Overture's STST indicates there
were 180,468 searches for the 30-day period ending the last day of
December '03. Of course, when we divide this number by 30 (days), one
naturally assumes that's an average of 6,016 combined searches per day
for the term keyword - (180,468/30=6016).

Now, if you
happen to be in a business that sells keywords (like Overture) then
6,016 pairs of eyeballs per day is a pretty encouraging number indeed!
The problem is, there isn't anywhere even close to 6,016 per-day
queries for the search term(s) keyword(s). In fact, the actual number,
which we'll share with you in a minute, will no-doubt shock you!

But, for the moment, let's look at why that number is skewed.

Reason #1 — Artificial Searches

Overture's
STST numbers are increased upward by automated queries. These include
automated bid optimizers, position and ranking monitors, page
popularity analyzers - anything other than a real person manually
performing a search is considered an automated query. Monitoring a
site's positioning at, say, AltaVista for the search term "keyword"
tallies a "hit" within Overture's STST system for that search term.
That's in spite of the fact that it was actually automated software
that generated the hit. The same holds true for page-popularity
checkers, pay- per-click bid optimizers or any other machine generated
monitor or tabulator that queries an engine for a "pet" keyword and
generates a hit in the process.

Then, when the same
positioning query is done at, say, MSN (another Overture partner), STST
records yet another hit. Understandably, STST cannot differentiate
between automated and human queries. Neither can they tell when the
auto-query has already been queried at another partner's site.

Now,
when we take into consideration all of the position monitoring, page
popularity checking and pay-per-click bid analyzing - there are well
over 15 automated and semi-automated bid checking software programs
alone - it's staggering to realize the significant effect these
automated queries are having on the overall search term query
tabulations.

However, artificial searches are only one
aspect contributing to the artificial skew (defined as: the inflation
of actual search queries for specific keywords performed by anything
other than humans).

(Continued in Part 2. Contact Robin@SearchEngineWorkshops.com for the complete article.)

About the Author

Robin Nobles is Co-Director of Training for Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com). She has trained several thousand people in her hands-on 2-5 day optimization and marketing workshops at locations across the globe and her online SEO courses (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). Robin is also a member of Wordtracker's special technical support team (http://www.wordtracker.com/moreinfo.html), and she partners with John Alexander whose eBook, Wordtracker Magic (http://www.wordtracker-magic.com), offers unique strategies for applying the Wordtracker service to generate profits for online marketers.

First published in Planet Ocean News. (http://www.searchenginehelp.com/moreinfo/)

Copyright 2004 Robin Nobles. All Right Reserved.

Robin@SearchEngineWorkshops.com

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