Keyword Elite 2.0 / Market Samurai / Google KW Tool – Who to believe?

[bstcroix]

I’m a long time user of Market Samurai but recently I purchased Keyword Elite 2.0 as I was very impressed with what it had to offer in the reviews I read.

I fired it up today and did some tests, but am now very confused as the search volume between the 3 tools is wildly varied and now quite frankly, untrustworthy.
Lets look at a generic keyword in the dog training niche – Dog Obedience Tips.

I have pulled all data from the Google source using All Countries and Territories and left the match type to Broad Match on all tools.

KWE 2.0:



Keyword Elite 2 reports a rather decent 8,010 searches a month, which works out to roughly 267 searches a day. Not a bad keyword.

Market Samurai:



But wait – is it such a good keyword? Market Samurai doesn’t seem to think so, reporting only 62 searches a day (or 1,860 per month), and estimated traffic of only 26 visits per day.

Google KW Tool:



Let’s go directly to the source. Google Keyword Tool seems to agree with Market Samurai on this one, reporting roughly the same search volume and for me, would rule out this keyword.

So it looks like Keyword Elite 2.0 lost out on this one, and got a little hyper-inflated on the search traffic volume for this keyword.

OK, so lets try another keyword in the health/beauty niche. Lets look at the term Stretch Mark Cream.

Keyword Elite 2.0:



Keyword Elite reports this keyword receives 7,500 searches per month, or roughly 250 searches a day – Again, not a bad keyword. (Although in the Search Engine Dominator module, KWE reports this keyword would only receive about 300 visits per month if it ranked #1 in Google – That’s not too good!)

Market Samurai:



Again, Market Samurai disagrees. But this time it seems to think this keyword is a huge one, with a whopping 2,433 searches PER DAY (or roughly 72,990 searches per month – A very high traffic (high competition) keyword indeed.

Google KW Tool:



Back to the source. Google KW Tool agrees with neither, but leans more towards Market Samurai’s estimates once again, reporting 60,500 searches per month – 10,000 less than Market Samurai, and 53,000 more searches than Keyword Elite 2.0.

So in conclusion, I am CONFUSED.

Who can you trust in the leading tools of the KW research world ? With such a wild discrepancy between at least two of these tools, one could end up being very disappointed in their traffic once deciding on a seemingly ‘winning keyword’.

Who do you trust?

[Bolo]

Market Samurai pulls it's data directly from the Google Keyword Tool so it's not surprising that the results are similar. Do you know where Keyword Elite gets it's information?

Just about every single keyword tool will have different data. The best you can do is see if one keyword is better then another.

And can anyone tell me if Wordtracker is still relevant?

[Vita_Vee]

This is because KE2 doesn't extract its data from Google but from another source called Wordpot.

You can get information on how wordpot gets its data and why it's different from google here :
http://www.wordpot.com/faqs.aspx

VV

[Jack]

Hmm... interesting.

I was a little confused about those numbers myself.

I had not heard of wordpot.

[ataga12]

Let me add Traffic Travis to the mix:

Dog Obedience Tips = 62 daily google searches

Stretch Mark Cream = 2589 daily google searches

Still not looking too good for KWE 2.0

[bstcroix]

Thanks for the heads up on Wordpot VV.

Keyword research is a tricky one at the best of times. I stumbled upon a great keyword in Market Samurai a few weeks ago that reported 400 searches per day so I went for it. I got the site ranking in position 4, page one on Google and never saw more than 40 visits per day (majority of them being from longer tail versions of the keyword).

This was very frustrating of course and when I eventually came across VV's site euserreviews.com and this forum I made the switch over to KWE 2.0.

I guess the only real way to accurately test a keyword is to set up a 24hr Adwords campaign with a high quality score landing page and count the impressions. But of course this will cost money ($5-20) for each keyword you want to get real numbers on.

From Wordpot's website:

"For example if you search on Wordpot for the term 'travel malaysia' you get a 'Total Daily Vol' = 27 Which is aproximatly 810/month.

If you search for “travel malaysia” in the Google keyword tool and set the “Match Type” to exact then you will get aproximatly 480 searches for a month. If you set it to Phrase then you get 2400 searches.

So you can see that if you then include searches from other search engines and account for some sample error the results are not too different."

My results beg to differ though. I now know that KWE 2.0 reports "estimated total daily searches done across all search engines" in the Keyword Surge module. Though even using [Exact Match] in Google Keyword Tool (just one search engine), the numbers are nowhere near comparable when we look at my examples in the original post.

Furthermore, the Market Research Sleuth module in KWE 2.0 pulls its data direct from Google Keyword Tool and the search numbers reported in this module are then the same as what you'd get using MS/Google but wildly different from what Keyword Surge reports.

I am a little concerned with this now after watching the niche website videos again, as the Amazon products that were rejected, were done so based on the Keyword Surge traffic numbers (Wordpot numbers), but the keywords for the chosen niche are approved/rejected in Market Research Sleuth (Google KW Tool numbers).

Now I do understand that VV is using Keyword Surge module to take a quick overall snapshot of product popularity in the first video, and when using Market Research Sleuth, is looking for keyword value, but it would be a sad thing to see some of those original Amazon products being rejected because Wordpot is grossly underestimating their traffic numbers - Or worse, overestimating the winning product numbers (Like it appears to in my "Dog Obedience Tips" example).

After thinking I had KW research figured out a few months ago, all these tools now have me stumped at the moment! What are your thoughts VV?

Cheers

[tpapae]

I purchased KE2.0 but still can't figure out all its intricacies though I've seen the vids a few times. I seem to gravitate back to the Google's KWT eventhough I know I could be using my time more effectively with my tools.

[benkleiner]

I really do not care if the KW is grabbed from Wordpot or Shmorldpot!
What is the most reliable among Keyword Elite 2.0 / Market Samurai /MNFinder?
Thank you

[Vita_Vee]

Hi BenKleiner

KE2 results are more reliable WITHOUT any doubt. It is well known that the Google keyword tool gives you a search volume much higher than it really is.

Let me give you just one example:

If you go to Google and type "google cash detective" without quotes you will find my site at #1 and #2 (euserreviews.com).

According to Market Samurai, an exact match of Google Cash Detective is searched for 118 times per day or 118*30 = 3,540 times per month.

According to KE2, an exact match of Google Cash Detective is searched for 860 times per month or 860/30 = About 28 times per day.

According to Google Analytics I'm getting an average of 316 visits per month or about 10 visitors per day for that keyword despite the fact that I'm #1 AND #2.

If I get about 50% of the search volume, the other 50% being dispatched between the google adwords ads and the other listing then my statistics are very close to KE2's results.

VV

[rc16284]

(12-13-2009 04:24 PM)Vita_Vee Wrote:  Hi BenKleiner

KE2 results are more reliable WITHOUT any doubt. It is well known that the Google keyword tool gives you a search volume much higher than it really is.

Let me give you just one example:

If you go to Google and type "google cash detective" without quotes you will find my site at #1 and #2 (euserreviews.com).

According to Market Samurai, an exact match of Google Cash Detective is searched for 118 times per day or 118*30 = 3,540 times per month.

According to KE2, an exact match of Google Cash Detective is searched for 860 times per month or 860/30 = About 28 times per day.

According to Google Analytics I'm getting an average of 316 visits per month or about 10 visitors per day for that keyword despite the fact that I'm #1 AND #2.

If I get about 50% of the search volume, the other 50% being dispatched between the google adwords ads and the other listing then my statistics are very close to KE2's results.

VV

Excellent post Vita.Nothing can beat your actual hands on experience.

Thanks.

[cuties099]

thank for the info vita ..

[Vita_Vee]

Thanks RC

[piusvic]

Though l have not use KE2 before but l use market samurai exclusively to do my keyword research and the result has been about accurate.

[Kensamson]

That's the annoying thing with these tools, they are never going to give the same results because they dont all get data from the same source, you have to accept the results with some caution. The most reliable method, as someone else pointed out, is to setup an Adword campaign and judge results for yourself, sure it will cost you money for the campaign, but it could save you going into a dud market and waste a loy of time and effort in the wrong niche

Ken

[sixpaw]

I think i'm more confused now than i was when i started reading this... thanks though. This is a touchy subject and though the one case VV used is obviously in favor of kwe2.0 the other data isn't ... so i guess the best answer is to test it yourself and see which comes up more accurate. Frustrating cause these save a ton of time but if they can't be trusted then what is the use?
Anyway food for thought.

[tashcorp]

I looked at the Wordpot traffic sources and apparently it receive them from a number of different sources not just google. So wat does it do just average all the search results and give us a mean value?

[milkhoneyland]

Almost all keywords searches that googke kw tools calculates are really lower than in practice. anyone has any idea about the percentage of visits from different rankings?
let's say 1 keywords, daily search is 1000, then how many visits for rank #1, how many Rank#2, Rank#3 etc.?

[lanjik902]

ke2 and market samurai are best. If you can afford get both of them.

[youproblog]

On the other hand I've heard that Brad Callen is actually keeping all the given keywords for himself, so he can see which niches are getting hot. Pretty clever if you ask me!

[billbolmeier]

This is great information for folks trying to figure this stuff out. Thanks. Good to have real numbers and how to compare them.