Is Your Traffic Estimate Correct?
The following guest tip was provided by Umair Asif.
While Google Adwords Keyword Tool is a great resource to evaluate the number of searches for a keyword, I assume that a majority of webmasters do not realize how easy it is to inadvertently distort calculating the amount of traffic for a keyword. The reason for this posting is to clear a common misconception regarding the amount of searches for a given keyword and actual clicks on the Search Engine result page.
Simply, if Google Adword Keyword Tool gives you 100,000 total monthly searches for a given keyword don’t necessarily means that 100,000 unique users will click on a search page. You may yourself experience that many times you do not click on the result after typing a certain query. Moreover there are times when you may click on Back button or simply type in the URL after finding something interesting.
Here I am going to address the question, how many users actually click on SERP (search engine result page).
Example:
Global Monthly Search Volume for the term ‘website marketing’ using Exact match type has approximately 60,500 searches per month across Google network. This means approximately 2,000 per day. Now, let us estimate a probable click through rate on Search Engine Result Page.
Here are estimates based on popular studies from prominent researchers, constituting large amounts of data sample.
1. Janson Study: From nearly 7 million queries, 35% never clicked on a result. This means a CTR of 65%.
2. Microsoft Study: Two different results of 78% and 58% CTR for common queries.
The above results should not be taken for granted but the do provide an insight into the behavior of users which can help webmasters better estimate traffic from a given keyword.
15 Responses to “Is Your Traffic Estimate Correct?”
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Is Your Traffic Estimate Correct? http://bit.ly/89QIxU
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Once again you girls/guys are amazing i have just started seriously looking into the traffic estimator issue. I thought Aaron Wall @ SEObook had a rant about it a few weeks ago how it didn’t add up but i’ve struggled to find that post again
So if this metric is all about impressions, this shifts the value of this data down a few levels. I’m looking at upto 80% variance in actual data to clients websites against what the traffic estimator provides…
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Interesting to see the click through data - quite surprising! Tho I do find CTRs on search results pages can depend on lots of things including industry and demographic.
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The keyword tool is excellent, I like to use to find keywords for my blog posts and articles. Also the main keywords for my site were found with the keyword tool. I had never even thought that how much may the click-thru rate vary between niches. Good point to note, when doing research.
Thanks for the post.
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We have a client who sits at #1 for almost 90% of their major keywords. So they should get the lion share of the clicks!
When I sat down and compared the traffic data in their Analytics account vs. the Adwords Keyword Tool, the numbers were all over the place.
Some Analytics numbers were 10% of the Keyword Tool others were 200%, there was zero consistency.
We still believe a PPC campaign, even for 30 days, is the best way to get data.
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I have looked into the figures and they are massive variances but there seems to be a consistent trend based on estimated search volume. Agree that if you are running exact match campaigns that it is likely more accurate and combined with the new keyword tool that provides stats that show your ad/search share.
http://www.google.com/sktool/
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What a light shed on all of us! So simple but profound idea not to expect too much! Thank you and would like to hear more of your scientific observations.
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thanks, i am doing it
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I have always found the google tool unreliable and found similar results as marketing toronto said. The other problem is that even sitting at no1 in search for a keyword often google ads will be higher and presumably soaking up a lot of the search traffic.
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I dont think the datas on Adwors Keyword Tools are correct…
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People have to consider Google product interms of getting accurate information. I always prefer Google trends and Google Adowrds keyword for that. Nice info
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The adwords tool is open to too much interpretation to be used simple as a means of estimating traffic. Variables such as location, exact, braod and phrase match as well as personalized search make this next to useless.
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I just think there is so much information on traffic and CTR that it confuses the ordinary web master.
A good niche plays a very big role in traffic.
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Thank you for your share! When I sat down and compared the traffic data in their Analytics account vs. the Adwords Keyword Tool, the numbers were all over the place.
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hi I have already listed my business at Google local business center
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