Demystifying The Radically Different Keyword Results Provided By Overture and Wordtracker ...because your online success depends on getting accurate keyword counts! Part 3- by Robin Nobles
(Continued from Part 2. Contact Robin@SearchEngineWorkshops.com for
complete article.)
Finally: Making sense of numbers (here comes shock).
Ok, now that you understand artificial skew and alternatives that can correct for it, let's move on to analyze numbers given by Overture's STST and Wordtracker's keyword selection service (KSS) using search term(s) keyword(s).
An in depth look at Overture's STST numbers...
Overture's STST shows 180,468 searches were conducted. This represents combined count of search terms keyword, keywords, Keywords, KEYWORD and KEYWORDS - combined total of all singular, plural, capitalized, upper and lower-case searches.
When we divide Overture's count (180,468) by 30 (because Overture's figures are for a 30-day period), inference is there are 6,016 searches per day that meet this criteria. In actuality, they receive just 40-60 per day total (are we shocked yet?).
Here's how we're crunching numbers.
Fact: Overture's STST suggests a combined average of 6,016 page views took place between Overture and its major partners - e.g. AltaVista, Yahoo, and others - each day for month of December '03. We're referring to search result pages like: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=keywords&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-tab-web- t&cop=mss&tab=
Fact: Each of these results pages lists between 10 and 40 URLs with descriptions.
Factor in Zipf's Law which predicts that traffic for any particular keyword on a search engine will be proportional to its popularity rank.
Factor in how title and description affect a user's propensity to click on a Web site.
Factor in Penn State University's findings that 55% of users check out one search result only, and 80% stop after looking at three results.
Factor in known elements leading to an estimated, but educated, conclusion as such...
Since it's a fact that Wordtracker's Web site appears in top- ten of Overture's results throughout their partner realm, they should be getting a guesstimateed 10% of overall click- throughs from all major engines, pay-per-clicks, and directories.
That would equate to about 602 visitors per day.
However, Wordtracker is currently ranked 1-10 on only about 25% of major engines, directories and pay-per-click portals for search term, keyword(s)... Calculate estimate...
...therefore, Wordtracker site should expect roughly 25% of this predicted click-through traffic, which is 150 visitors per day.
Compare calculated estimate to known facts...
In fact, Wordtracker receives 10 - 15 visitors per day for search term(s) keyword(s). In fact, Overture's STST overestimates this search query by a factor of 10.
Furthermore, since Wordtracker is estimating they receive approximately 25% of total traffic then that would put total traffic generated at 40 to 60 per day (25% of 40 to 60 = 10 to 15 visitors a day).
In fact, Overture's STST overestimates total search query count by a factor of 100 ...based on 6,016 being more than 100 times greater than 40 to 60 figure suggested by Wordtracker's actual visitors.
Experience shock and awe at difference between numbers!
Wordtracker's service provides very different numbers...
Using same search term(s) keyword(s), we pulled a representative result from Wordtracker database (on January 13, 2004) that predicts searches per day conducted throughout major engines, directories and pay-per-clicks on Internet.
