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 search term "keyword," Overture's STST indicates there were 180,468 searches for 30-day period ending 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 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 search term(s) keyword(s). In fact, actual number, which we'll share with you in a minute, will no-doubt shock you!

But, for 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 search term "keyword" tallies a "hit" within Overture's STST system for that search term. That's in spite of fact that it was actually automated software that generated 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 process.

Then, when 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 auto-query has already been queried at another partner's site.

Now, when we take into consideration all of 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 significant effect these automated queries are having on overall search term query tabulations.

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

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

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