Confusing Keyword Research Results? Options

[vincenzo]

I've been doing keyword research for the terms "leather shawls" and "western shawls". Using the trial versions of WordTracker and Keyword Discovery I am finding that they both show zero or close to zero searches for these terms. Yet when I do Google searches for these terms, even allintitle searches, there are clearly lots of sites selling them, in some cases optimized for them.
Now I do understand that just because people sell an item it does not mean that anyone is buying or searching for those items, but it seems strange to me to be seeing zero searches for what I thought were fairly common items.

Can anyone shed some light here for me?

Thanks

[Trellian]

Hi,

I've checked a few other sources such as Overture and they had no results either. it would seem that these are just not searched for search terms or not searched for often enough to register.

Cheers
David

[Kria05]

I wouldn't believe the results you are seeing in the tools.

The number of impressions (and therefore number of searches) I get from many exact matches in adwords campaigns are not in the same ball park as the results I see in the tools.

[vincenzo]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm thinking now that I'll do an Adwords campaign to find out the reality of this.

[Scottie]

That's a much more realistic test than keyword tools. Many of my sites get significant traffic from terms that are "never searched." When you get into niche items like that, people are more likely to type in a variety of different words to find what they are looking for, so volume is low and the search term tools don't pick them up.

If that's what you sell, use the words that your customers use!

Keyword tools are best used to give you benchmarks and relative popularity of keyword phrases - they don't capture all the queries on the net (although they are getting closer!)

[vincenzo]

Thanks for that information.

If I get any interesting results once it is set up, I'll report back here.

Thanks

[adybee]

Keyword tools are best used to give you benchmarks and relative popularity of keyword phrases - they don't capture all the queries on the net (although they are getting closer!)

At last I've been banging on about this for ages with my company all I ever get is "that's not a lot of searches for such a popular term..." (IMG:style_emoticons/default/shout.gif)

IMHO what keyword tools are excellent for is giving you a pointer to any extra terms that are being searched for (in relation to your site's key phrases).

[Georg]

That's a much more realistic test than keyword tools. Many of my sites get significant traffic from terms that are "never searched." When you get into niche items like that, people are more likely to type in a variety of different words to find what they are looking for, so volume is low and the search term tools don't pick them up.

If that's what you sell, use the words that your customers use!

Keyword tools are best used to give you benchmarks and relative popularity of keyword phrases - they don't capture all the queries on the net (although they are getting closer!)

interesting statement indeed. This would negate the use of adwords KW tool and any other tools.....hmmm... worth a try.
And you are doing well with that method ?

[Scottie]

Hi Georg-

What method? Writing naturally relevant copy? Yes, it works great. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

I do use the keyword tools for relative volume and ideas for words or phrases I might not have considered, but especially for "low volume" phrases like local phrases or niche items, no keyword tool is going to be able to give you a precise prediction.

Remember, all they can show you is the past, not the future. While past queries do give us a good foundation for how people look for things, they can't accurately predict how many people will search next month. For many sites I've worked with, a "negligible" 2-3 queries a month on a couple dozen keyword phrases is more than enough to send them qualified business.

If your local news station runs a story about your type of business... you want them to be able to find you, even if KD said no one ever searches for that phrase!