A big change has taken place with the search volume numbers that you can find using the Google Keyword Tool. If you haven’t heard about this yet, than I strongly suggest you go over to the keyword tool and check your main keywords. You may be surprised at the numbers you will get.
It seems that this update is affecting all of the search volume numbers. This is pretty weired as it should mean that the global searches should also be updated and does that mean that Google is getting less traffic than previously reported? Is Google smaller than with thought?
This are all good question with no real answers yet, as no official announcement was made by Google regarding this sudden update.
For those of us that are doing SEO for a while, this should not come as a big surprise. It is well known that the search volume numbers that are shown with the Google Keyword Tool are off base and mostly inaccurate. I haven’t heard of one marketer that was targeting a specific keyword and was surprised at the amount of traffic he was getting after getting the number one spot.
On the other hand, there too many stories of marketeers (me included) being very disappointed with the amount of traffic they received after getting the top spot in Google. The true search volume was only fractions of what you would get using the Google Keyword Tool while using Exact match.
After reading about this update at the Warrior Forum and Backlinks Forum, the common ground is that the current search volume numbers are more accurate and represent a 50% drop when compared with the previous numbers.
The bottom line is that this update shouldn’t come as a big surprise to those that are already into SEO, as we all learned that the numbers shown with the Google Keyword Tool are mostly exaggerated. It is a good thing as now you can get a more accurate picture of the search volume and you will get a better understanding as to how much traffic you can expect.
There is a very simple yet very accurate method of assessing the true search volume numbers of any specific keyword phrase and I will tell you more about it in my next post.
