Google Keyword Estimator

[mccormackmorrison]

Hello

Does the Google traffic estimator include the impact of instant? For example, if I type the phrase "London restaurant", instant may provide a list of search results for the phrase "London restaurant guide" prior to me confirming whether or not I just want to search using the phrase "London restaurant". Is this registered in any way as a search for the phrase "London restaurant guide" (i.e. does Instant impact upon the search volumes presented in the Google traffic estimator)?

In addition, is there any up to date assessment on how reliable the revised traffic estimator is? The tool currently suggests that for a well known brand we are working for does not have any search volume (over a whole year) for the brand keyphrase when used in isolation (there is traffic for various combinations of the brand and a generic term). However, as one would expect, our analytics data is showing that there are in excess of 1 million annual visitors that use the brand keyphrase in isolation to access the website via natural search and nearly 1.5 million via PPC. Is anyone else getting these problems?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Rgds

Neil

[rishil]

My honest advice? Use the traffic esti,ator only as a guideline. Google KW tool is FUBAR in many instances - for example, one search term it promises 10,000 searches a month, which I rank 1 for, only gets a portion of that if I look at the impressions i webmaster tools (another stupid tool) and only a fraction of the traffic you would expect, nowhere near if the data was correct.

[mccormackmorrison]

Thanks for the response.

I wouldn't have thought the traffic numbers would include these intermediate instant responses either (primarily because it isn't a genuine search, and as Rand's last question suggested it is something that can be 'gamed'). In addition, if the traffic numbers do include intermediate instant searches then as you suggest there is a possibility that search traffic numbers could be double counted for a given keyphrase: once when the intermediate instant result shows for a variant of the possible instant suggestion, and again if you reject the instant search result by hitting return.

However, it is possible for you to click on a result in the intermediate Instant SERP without formally accepting the suggestion (i.e. it remains 'greyed' out). Thereby, you have informally searched for that instant keyphrase suggestion. How would the google traffic estimator deal with this situation? (I feel I should be contacting Google, but I am interested if anyone has any opinions on this).

Finally, just to confirm the brand in question does not have any traffic in the estimator tool for an exact match. I have tried on numerous occasions just to check I'm not going mad. It's going to be an issue as it will cast doubt in the clients mind on the other suggested traffic volumes.

Thanks again.

Neil

[scanlin]

I can't imagine that the traffic numbers include intermediate Instant searches before the user has hit 'return'. Otherwise all the shortest key phrase would always have the highest number of searches (the sum of every other search where it is the prefix).

I don't know how reliable the traffic estimate is, but it seems odd that it's showing zero for a phrase that gets 1M searches. I just tried my own brand and I do show non-zero results that seem low but are certainly not zero.