Demystifying The Radically Different Keyword Results Provided By Overture and Wordtracker, Part 3

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 the complete article.)

Finally: Making sense of the numbers (here comes the shock).

Ok, now that you understand the artificial skew and the
alternatives that can correct for it, let's move on to analyze
the numbers given by Overture's STST and Wordtracker's keyword
selection service (KSS) using the 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 the combined count of the search terms keyword,
keywords, Keywords, KEYWORD and KEYWORDS - the 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), the 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 the 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 the 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 the title and description affect a user's
propensity to click on a Web site.

Factor in the 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 the top-
ten of Overture's results throughout their partner realm, they
should be getting a guesstimateed 10% of the 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 the major engines, directories and pay-per-click portals for
the search term, keyword(s)... Calculate the estimate...

...therefore, the 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 the
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 the total traffic then that would put the
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 the total search query
count by a factor of 100 ...based on 6,016 being more than 100
times greater than the 40 to 60 figure suggested by Wordtracker's
actual visitors.

Experience shock and awe at the difference between the numbers!

Wordtracker's service provides very different numbers...

Using the same search term(s) keyword(s), we pulled a
representative result from the Wordtracker database (on January
13, 2004) that predicts searches per day conducted throughout the
major engines, directories and pay-per-clicks on the Internet.

The results were...

keyword - 93 searches (lower case, singular)
Keyword - 39 searches (Capitalized, singular)
keywords - 187 searches (lower case, plural)
Keywords - 184 searches (Capitalized, plural)
KEYWORD - 115 searches (UPPER case, singular)
Total Predicted Daily Searches for all Engines = 618

This figure - 618 - Wordtracker compiled directly from results
taken from Meta-engines, Metacrawler and Dogpile in order to
eliminate the artificial skew.

Wordtracker further adjusted the number downward by filtering out
keyword spam (as defined above) based upon a proprietary formula
used to identify search terms that are being searched at
intervals too regular to have been conducted by actual humans.

These suspiciously regular and assumed to be artificially
generated searches are therefore discounted in arriving at the
final number - 618.

Even when taking into account such dependent variables such as
position, title, and description, we would expect (logically
guesstimate) the website to receive about 10% of the total
traffic due to top-ten placement, targeted title and relevant
link-description.

And finally, we should expect no better than 25% of that total
traffic, due to the fact that Wordtracker has top-ten placement
in only 25% of the relevant engines.

So the calculations show...

618 x 10% = 61.8 x 25% = approx 15 visits per day.

This is more in line with Wordtracker's actual 10-15 per day
average number of visits generated by the 5 variations of the
search term keyword across all of the major engines.

So, whose numbers should we trust?

When it comes to trusting the numbers, you should take into
account what you are using them for. If you're looking to
determine relative popularity of a given item, service, topic, or
category, then Overture's STST can fill the bill nicely - and for
free!

For instance, Overture's STST returns the following numbers for
the following searches...

58,312 home insurance
57,315 home owner insurance
233,854 auto insurance
570,337 car insurance

This tells us (for free) that car insurance gets about twice as
many searches as auto insurance. It also tells us that home
insurance gets about the same number of searches as home owner
insurance ...and that searches for car insurance is TEN times
more popular than home owner insurance.

No doubt about it, when researching what to sell online, this is
valuable preliminary information that Overture's STST provides
for free.

However, based upon what we now know about artificial skew, we'd
want to get a third-party-review of the search terms - one that
adjusted the numbers for skew - before we bought advertising on a
pay-per-click engine or spent good time and money optimizing a
site for organic (think Google) Web search results.

After all, if Overture shows 6,016 "hits" per day out of which
Wordtracker is experiencing 15 visitors, then reality suggests we
should do the math (i.e., apply the information) that distills
the raw numbers into useful data. Let's first decide if "15"
visitors per day will pay the advertising bill (duh!) ...and, if
the reality count is anywhere near 6,016, we'll be ecstatic,
right?

Always remember it's the amateurs that believe optimistically
romanced numbers just before they lose their wallets on the way
to bankruptcy. Professional marketers learn to err on the
downside of expectations and then smile when the pleasant
surprises shower down riches.

They know that nothing beats accurate information - the most
powerful marketing tool on earth.