Ever since the launch of Google’s Keyword Planner it has been a staple for both Adwords users and SEOs to gain an understanding of the traffic volumes of keywords. The tool has helped many to identify the high traffic keywords and those which have a lower volume, but less competition associated with them.
Last week Google made the tool much less valuable, estimates had always been based on individual keyword phrase, however the tool now combines keyword data, showing identical estimates for similar keywords and variants. In plain English this means that you can no longer see individual estimates to asses which of those has the highest or lowest search volumes – so you won’t know which variant of the keyword you want to be targeting!
In this example there are 720 monthly searches in Wales for both “SEO” and “Search Engine Optimisation” – the data is identical, where historically the tool had always shown a higher emphasis on those simply searching for “SEO”. Somebody could believe that there are 1440 combined monthly searches for these keywords, but in reality 720 is the combined figure.
This figure also doesn’t reveal what additional keywords are being included in order to generate the 720 searches. Google has not officially revealed how the keyword data is now being calculated, however the keyword planner now appears to combine search variants such as
plurals with non-plurals for any word in the keyword phrase
acronyms with longhand version
stemming variants: -er, -ing, -ized, -ed etc keywords (ie. designer, designing, designed)
words spelt with or without space (ie. car park and carpark)
words with and without punctuation (ie. childrens toys and children’s toys)
Although some reports suggest that it makes sense for Google to combine and include close variants in the tool, for many advertisers and SEOs the tool has now become meaningless as the actual volume for close variants of keywords can be significantly different.
So what does this mean for those trying to asses the true volume of keyword data? To put it simply: you will have to have to run an Adwords pay per click campaign to generate the data, DareDevil always recommends this in any case, but it will be more of a necessity now!
It’s worth noting that this change does not appear to be connected with the “bug” that many have experienced recently with the Keyword Planner tool only being accessible to those who are running active Adwords Campaigns.
Want to Talk?
If you are concerned by this, or would like to discuss us managing your Pay Per Click campaigns or your SEO please get in touch
