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Monthly searches totally different from few months ago?
cyuen025
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29 Jan 11 10:48 am

Monthly searches totally different from few months ago?

I was curious about the global monthly searches for my keywords and whether the numbers have changed a little or a lot, so I plugged them into the Google keyword tool. I was quite surprised to find that, for most of them, the numbers are dramatically lower than when I did my keyword research back in July/August! What's up with that?

I have heard that the Google keyword tool is pretty inaccurate for the lower numbers anyways (and most of my keywords don't have really high numbers), but how could there be such a huge difference? For example, one of them had 880 searches a few months ago, but now it says only 140? This totally changes things for my campaign, if the numbers are so low. :( Yet, I also didn't notice a decrease in my traffic or anything, so maybe the numbers are just totally off...

So the biggest question I have right now is, if the keyword tool is so inaccurate for monthly searches, then how can anyone do proper keyword research for the sub niches? It's much harder to gauge things when the numbers could be anything.
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kakaboo
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29 Jan 11 12:17 pm

 The only way to gauge good keywords is experience... once you have enough experience you will be able to tell or guess what are the keywords people would be typing into the search bar..

reason why the numbers sometimes seem so off is because nobody can really predict how many people are going to type in the same terms for the next month right? for example, maybe there might be a lot of people type in "christmas toys" for the month of december, but you can be sure when February comes the number will dwindle by more than half...
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mortalengine
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29 Jan 11 12:21 pm

 Google changed and updated its keyword results in the past 2 months approx
Many of the previous results were based on estimates, especially the lower ones
For example you my have noticed before many keywords were at 880 or 6600
The new ones are more accurate, but by no means gospel, thats why traffic is the same
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cyuen025
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30 Jan 11 10:09 pm

 Oh, that makes sense. Either way, it's all good I guess. Managed to find a few more good keywords when I was redoing my keyword research last night. : )
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faradina
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31 Jan 11 2:47 am

 Of course, the results are bound to change again as these are based on actual searches done by users and the same number of users would not be searching for the same query terms month after month.
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michael025
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09 Feb 11 4:13 pm

 Just as Fara said, the google keyword tool gets its results from actual keywords typed in by its users, which means you should expect it to change every month. Your site may still get the same traffic, but they might be directed to your site by other search engines, or maybe even if the global searches dropped drastically, your site still gets the few clicks you see on the keyword tool : )
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jmpruitt
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09 Feb 11 9:07 pm

 I have had a few keywords that changed a lot over the years. I had one that I targeted that was getting 700-800 global searches when I went for it, and got ranking quickly. now it gets about 10k monthly searches.

SEarch volumes are based on history, and in the future they can always change.
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kdruhl
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22 Feb 11 12:55 pm

 Part of it is a mystery; Google keyword search numbers can be way off. If you need more accurate data, a good way is to run a PPC campaign for a week, and use those numbers as your traffic estimate.
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jankles
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26 Feb 11 11:18 pm

 Aren't the numbers in the keyword tool supposed to be the 12 month average?

If this is the case, it would be very difficult for there to be dramatic swings form month to month in the numbers, unless there is something else strange going on, right?
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jmpruitt
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27 Feb 11 3:17 am

 actually, the kw tool is a 3 month average not 12 month, so there can be huge swings depending on what time of year it is, what is going on in the news, and other factors that contribute to search variations
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