Traffic estimation with Google's traffic estimator
I was reading Aaron's excellent post on the value of a #1 ranking in Google, and decided to do a quick check on one of my most important keywords in the Google traffic estimator, vs. Google Analytics, and I was once again astonished by how incredibly bad the estimator data is when noone is bidding on a keyword... Check this out:
![traffic estimator data for the term \](http://yoast.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/traffic-estimator.png "traffic estimator data for the term \")
So that's 1 or 2 clicks a day... Now check out the stats for css3.info on that term, which holds the #1 and #2 position, with sitelinks:
6,600 visitors where using the term css3 as or as a part of their search query, and clicked on the organic results for css3.info in the last month. That's 220 a day. So either the ratio of a #1 and #2 ranking with sitelinks vs. an AdWords ad is 110-220 to 1, or the data in the traffic estimator is crap...
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Patrick Altoft May 4th, 2008 at 22:06
Because there are no advertisers for the keyword (or very few) then I doubt the click data is being exported from the organic search department to the Adwords tool.
Rosenstand May 4th, 2008 at 22:54
Hi Joost!
In the danish language I rarely (never) see data in the traffic estimator that are even remotely realistic. And I don't think organic here. E.g.: The traffic estimator says 6-10 click a day, but the real world stats shows between 90 and 120 click a day on the keyword. Maybe because Danish is such a small language? Do you recognize this for strictly Dutch campaigns?
Tom Broekhoven May 5th, 2008 at 08:40
I allso was really astonished when using the traffic estimator for a few specific words that lead numerous people to some Website.
They receive over 300 people alone for that term, still the traffic tool tells me it has a very low search volume..
I strongly believe that the value of the traffic estimator is overrated.
Joost de Valk May 5th, 2008 at 15:21
@Patrick: isn't Google supposed to make money on the long tail? :)
@Rosenstand: Dutch tends to be pretty realistic for words that have bids in AdWords...
@Tom: it is, but especially so for words without advertisers.
Sander May 5th, 2008 at 16:16
I use adwords to promote a webdev conference I'm organizing, but the CPC they ask are insane. A minimum bid of € 4 to € 8 to advertise on keywords like php, js and css/css3. No wonder nobody advertises on it, and thats why there is no traffic history to generate a good estimation.
Anil Varghese May 6th, 2008 at 05:08
Hi, the 'Estimated clicks/day' shown is only the AdWords numbers for that keyword(css3) - and doesn't show the real traffic. What that means is, for this keyword the PPC clicks were only 1-2 per day.
Why this number makes sense for advertisers is - this is the number of clicks one can expect for this keyword on AdWords. Imagine if Google shows even organic clicks - it'd look inflated when compared with actual PPC clicks, which advertisers may not like - and Google isn't taking 'any' chance with that ;-)
Joost de Valk May 6th, 2008 at 06:08
@Anil: please, re-read the article :) I know it's the AdWords clicks, and I also know that this number is ridiculously low even for that. "No chances"? My god they're making sure nobody will advertise on that keyword this way...
Paul @ Web Design Ireland May 6th, 2008 at 23:22
Joost,
Unfortunately accurate keyword data involves investment in Wordtracker or similar. Sometimes finding that keyword involves long tailing until you accidently stumble across the killer keyword.
sanjeev May 14th, 2008 at 03:15
Hi, the 'Estimated clicks/day' shown is only the AdWords numbers for that keyword(css3) - and doesn't show the real traffic. What that means is, for this keyword the PPC clicks were only 1-2 per day
Ilja May 15th, 2008 at 15:23
Traffic Estimation sucks.
I work as marketeer at the biggest postorder in garden products in Europe. We work in 20 countries and have 20 sites. Key searches in analytics is Way more than estimated In Germany. Funny thing is that the Estimation for the Netherlands is about the same as the total hits for this keyword. It is a position 1 for us. I made a little calculation between different programs and even used ( for the percentages) the old AOL Dump data to look at the losses when it should be rank 1 or lower.
This Traffic Estimation is Deadwrong at most of the points if you ask me. Next season Adword campaigns are going to run again but i realy don't use the traffic estimator for predictions. We use our data we already have. 39% of our traffic is Organic and that is lets say pure and i have taken of the keyword that people uses to just make an easy click to our site without writing the complete url in the addressbar.
Ps
Even Analytics figures are not precise.
My advise is to use these programs as a extra commercial point of view and not as pure data
Tom Broekhoven May 16th, 2008 at 07:58
Most of the time I use a combination of the Adwords Estimator and the Yahoo Search Marketing tool.
Allso It's allways good to talk with people from a company and let them describe their business.
Adwords is good thing for experimenting keywords and their value. I allways use regular expressions to filter the keywords users really use. Some really good keywords roll out from time to time.
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Peter@latterkonsulent Oct 17th, 2008 at 17:19
I have just started an adwords campaign and was very confused, It helps to know that I am not the only one that thinks the traffic estimator is at all accurate.
The data in the google suggest keyword tool does not even match the date in the traffic estimator.