Weblog Bucks

The Internet Marketing world received what seemed like very good news: as of July 2008, the AdWords Keyword Tool is showing actual search volumes instead of shaded green bars.

My Inbox was flooded with messages from all the newsletters I subscribe to, announcing the revolution. One of the marketing gurus went so far as to conclude: “it probably spells the end for services like Wordtracker.” Another guru couldn’t curb his enthusiasm: “Holy cow! Talk about shaking up the planet!”

Jim Morris, who is undoubtedly a keyword research authority and the founder of Nichbot.com, celebrated the breaking news on his blog: “All of a sudden - there is no longer any confusion about how many times people are searching for a certain keyword phrase on Google.com.”

Mr. Morris included in his post a screenshot of 8 results the Tool returned when he had asked for keyword suggestions for the term “blogging.” Here they are: blogging, blogs, blog, blogging software, radio blog, pink is the new blog, blog search, bad girls blog. Three columns follow the keywords list: Advertiser Competition, Approx Search Volume for last month, and Approx Average Search Volume.

Up to July 2008, the Competition column and the two Search Volume columns were using shaded bars, which were supposed to indicate relative volumes, i.e. the more shaded the bar the higher the volume. Since the change was made, the 2 Search Volume columns show actual numbers, but the Advertiser Competition volume is still represented by a shaded bar.

One of the keyword suggestions Jim Morris got was “radio blog.” The Competition bar next to this keyword is 3/4 green, representing what looks like quite a lot of competition, right? I strongly suggest you search google.com for “radio blog.” You’ll be surprised to discover there is not even one ad! (Well, perhaps by now there are a couple). Neither when you use broad search nor when you use phrase; neither in the United States nor in Canada or the UK.

The next keyword phrase I checked was “bad girls blog.” The mysterious bar is 50% green, representing more than light competition (Or does it? Nobody knows what it actually represents. The question is, why is it a secret? Why doesn’t Google tell its customers the exact volume of competition?) Anyway, in the case of “bad girls blog,” again, there is not even one ad in the English speaking countries.

You may ask “what is the problem? Don’t use Google if you don’t like it.” Well, the problem is that Google is not just a search engine. Google charged its advertisers over 16 billion dollars last year alone, and an advertiser must rely on the data Google provides him or her in order to set up a good campaign. If these data are extremely inaccurate, there is a good chance most AdWords advertisers are spending their money in vain.