doodlebug

Mark you have been rather useful in your post regarding GKT, it's good to hear it from someone with the sites ranked and has proof of the traffic.

I don't get Google, the whole point of beta is to give a product/service to your customers to play around with and recieve feedback yet there is no option to leave feedback

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No links for me thanks !

markb

Hi Doodlebug,

Thanks for your comments. Id rather people know to be cautious about buying keyword domain names solely on the expected number of keyword searches on the old tool. I wouldnt even use the knew tool to value them either as this isnt what the adwords tool was created for.

Even if you where to buy a good .co.uk keyword named domain, lets say "carsforsale" and the tool says it gets 49,500 local exact searches in the UK. There is virtually no way that someone could buy the domain and get it ranked number 1 in google for "Cars for Sale" unless they worked on seo for the domain for several years. Some keyword searches are dominated by large companies that have been going for years, in this instance its autotrader and exchange and mart. You'd be very lucky to even get in position 3 for this keyword after a few years. If the keyword gets 49,500 exact searches, most of these visitors will click on the paid results in the google search, number 1 position would be lucky to get 30% of 49,500. While postion 3 would get probably 5% or even less which would be 2,500 or less visitors per month.

Therefore I would be very wary of valuing a domain which you are thinking of purchasing based solely on how many visitors you think you may be getting through the search results. There a lot of factors that are involved, and just because you own the keyword named domain, doesnt mean you can rank easily for the keyword.


Mark

GeoMal

Checked against webmaster tools for 2 sites, one geo and one commercial. Similar story on each. The details for the geo:

Legacy GKT Local exact 27.1K
New GKT Local exact 4.4K

Actual from Webmaster tools 9.9K.

I also have records of exact and phrase searchs from the legacy tool for the geos going back 2 years or so. The figures increased roughly 50% over that period for around a dozen geos.

markb

This probably goes to show that google adwords shouldnt be used to determine the estimated number of searches which any given keyword may receive.

From my own research on my own sites the new one is far more accurate but still cant be relied upon to give the correct information. Many of the old legacy exact search numbers where more than 10x the actual number of searches which is a very big difference.

The more people that are aware of this on here and in the domain industry the better. You dont want to sell on a keyword domain to someone on the basis that its going to get xxxx number of searches if they get on the first page in google, and they then find out it only gets x number of searches after all their hard work. The same goes when your buying a domain, be wary of how much you are paying if the basis is purely on how many expected searches the keyword will get.

The only way to value a domain on the number of searches received, is if your selling a domain name and it is ranked on the first page already and you have proof of the number of searches, or you have other methods of showing how many searches the phrase receives.

Cheers
Mark

Caz

I think everyone always knew the totals were not the exact amount of searches in google engines.

Google has changed direction, you only have to speak to someone at google about how to better sell adwords to clients, and bingo the answer is there.

Why have people sitting in serps top positions not spending as much on adwords, when you can change the view and tell people there is a much smaller pie, so adwords becomes necessary just to maintain your current turnover.