Trust Google's Keyword Tool?

from SEroundtable.com

Google provides a very popular Keyword Suggestion Tool that many SEMs rely on.
But, a HighRankings Forum thread questions how trustworthy the tool is.

Many SEMs use the tool because it is convenient and Google provides the estimated search volumes. At the same time, many SEMs know how to take Google's estimates and apply them to their campaigns. Experience and campaign history helps SEMs learn this trade.

In fact, did you know that the keyword tool allows you to adjust the type of query based on match type? After you run the tool, you can then click on a drop down menu to select the match type, broad, phrase, exact or negative match.

Research Results

I believe you get "better" numbers when logged in to Adwords and use exact match.
As we know that these are not actual numbers but more of a index against the set of keywords being researched. I tend to go with Global versus Local as well.

One of the big issues, is that if you run the report for a word that is not on an
advertiser list yet, so there is no competition for that word, it gives you a totally wrong amount of queries you can get per day.

Like any keyword tool, the Google Keyword Tool needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There are always going to be irrelevant queries, and for that reason I would never simply add them without taking the time to scrub them and identify other expansions. However, the tool is generally valuable for identifying head terms and modifiers.

No keyword tool is perfect.

All of you are not believing on the tool provided by Google because it's free. If Google were charging you for their tools like: KeywordExternalTool, Google Trends, Google Insights, SKTool (Search Based Keyword Tool) etc... you would appreciate them.

Second, the tools provided by Google are not for Publishers but are for Advertisers.
So if you want to use these tools for your keyword research, you will have to learn
the whole process of Keyword and Market researching.

Tell me one thing. who knows you better than you? YOU youself, have you any doubt
on this fact? Who knows exactly which keywords have been searched mostly on GOOGLE?
It knows only Google exactly.

You believe on WordTracker which is depending on DogPile and MetaCrawler that cover
only 2% market of the US and UK. What about for the other 98% market and rest of the
countries of the world?

You believe on the data of KeywordDiscovery, and on what it depends? Near about on
200 small search engines.

All keyword tools capture their data from Google, Yahoo and MSN and after normalizing that data, they serve you and you believe on them because they charge you while Google, Yahoo and MSN are not charging you a penny, you can't believe on their results.

Profitable Market and Profitable Keyword Research is a Step by Step long process.
You can't make decision in 10 minutes about which keyword is good and which is not.

Second thing is, which keyword is looking best, have you ever checked the Complexity
Factor of the keyword, Search Volume and Actual Competition count of the keyword?

If you don't know properly about all these 3 most important factors, you can never
capture right market and right keyword.

Don't blame on the Tools given by Google. All the tools are giving their best results offered by Google. The problem is not in the Data given by Google. The problem is we don't know how to use the data properly and efficiently and how to make right decisions on the basis of this data.

Be Positive.

No other site or company gives you results and tools like Google, Yahoo and MSN for free. These are the biggest Search Engines at the current time. Why would they give you wrong results which can hurt their reputation?

The problem is not in Data given by the tools, the problem is in our Researching Process. If an external tool is saying 3000 searches per month for any keyword it means 100 searches per day and each SERP has a minimum of 15 links: 10 for Organic and 5 for Sponsored.

Top 3 results captures 60% clicks. It means only the top 3 results are getting 60 clicks and the rest of the 10 to 12 links get 40 clicks. If you are getting 5th position for any keyword and you think that you will get 100 clicks per day, it's a problem of your mind because you are going to get clicks from rest of the 40 clicks and 10 other sites that are in your competition.

The summary is that if any keyword is getting 3000 clicks per month and you are
not in the top 3 on SERP, you are not going to get more than 2 to 5 clicks per day.

Yes, I trust Google's Keyword Tool. In fact, I think it's so great, it can be used to determine ideas for successful domain names. I wrote an entire blog about how this tool helps you accomplish this:
www.themasterblog.com

Google's Keyword Tool