How is WORDTRACKER ?

[virajw]

If anyone has used WordTracker, could you please tell me whether their search queries include those of Google as well?

As far as I know Google's search words are a closely guarded secret while Overture's searches are available to the public. Most applications and services have access to Overture's results but not Google's.

I'd like hear from satisfied (or dissatisfied) customers of WordTracker.
Viraj

[A Posse Ad Esse]

As far as I know Wordtracker uses results from the metasearch engines metacrawler and dogpile, which do indeed include Google searches (also Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves).

However, I came across a post in the DigitalPoint forum and it's left me feeling pretty cast adrift. (still being a newbie and finding my feet) slightly off-topic, but relevant...

[virajw]

Hi Mark,

Actually I use several desktop applications that return Overture's results for free. One even returns the KEI based on supply and demand. If WordTracker doesn't supply the searches of Google and MSNSearch (which is about 60%) of all queries, how can one justify subscribing to their service? I think WordTracker is a big hoax. Google never releases their stats to anyone and WordTracker merely implies that they track the results of Google and MSNSearch with sales talk and fluff but doesn’t say the results are that of Google’s.

There was a time when Google used to suggest the cost per ad and CTR for their Adwords customers. That gave a clue to some of the top bids even if you didn't start a campaign. But now they have changed that as well whereby giving nothing away as far as bids and searches are concerned. If Google doesn't give even such small clues to their own customers, what makes you think that they'll give access to WordTracker?

Recently I got a friend who has a WordTracker a/c to dig for some words and compared his results with my non-WordTracker results. Surprize-Surprize- they were almost identical. This goes to show that they rely heavily on Overture and Yahoo though they charge a subscription fee.

I smelt something fishy the moment I used their free trial.

Viraj

[A Posse Ad Esse]

Looking at your question again, with fresh eyes (um...), WordTracker almost certainly doesn't get stats directly from Google, no.
But, if pushed, I still trust WordTracker results above Overture's.

Overture, as has been well documented, report duplicate results from their different monitored engines, plurals, and case variances as unique instances of a single search. One person could search for "Toastracks" and "toastracks"* on both Yahoo and MSN each and it would be recorded as four seperate occurrences. Also, many seo and similar tools hit the major search engines during research activities. Thus Overture's results could be said to be grossly overeported.

I experimented with desktop tools that used Overture and reported both KEI and "KEI", I spent an afternoon optimizing for a keyword with a reported KEI of over 1000, went to recheck and found it was misreported all previous times and was actually around 12! I'm not to keen on KEI in general, much less KEI reported from Overture stats, just my opinion

If you look at WordTracker's promises and M.O. they haven't claimed to have any direct knowledge of Google's search stats.
They retrieve their data from metasearchers, which trawl Google, MSN, Yahoo & AskJeeves. They haven't claimed to get stats from people that set out to get only "Google results" (large majority of searchers), just people who want to search Google at the same time as Yahoo, MSN and AJ.

The number of searches done on metasearches represent a small percentage of the total searching done online (I can't understand this yet: why search one when you can search many? I'm putting it down to the amazing branding Google and Yahoo have) .'. any results reported by Wordtracker, whilst they are going to be (for the most part) many times smaller, they're arguably more satistically accurate for what they are.

Sorry if I sound a bit upstartish, like I said before, I'm still a newbie.
Again, If I was pushed to choose one tool it would be WordTracker.
Of course, as I'm not being pushed I say use both together, but know how to use both together and realise how they differ. As far as I'm aware, neither provides cast iron results at the end of the day...

Apologies for any repetition/typos...2am aftermath of an 18 hour stag "night" just kicking in...I should be in bed...bleh

-always looking for education-
-Mark

[virajw]

KEI has to be taken with a pinch of salt regardless of how you obtain the stats. Sometimes falling back on primitive methods of testing keywords (like checking individual SE) works best.

[zaba99]

I am an SBIer at the present, but I also use WT as I have an account with them. No matter which Keyword Search Tool one uses, you have to take everything with a grain of salt (or a pinch).
But I really like to use WT to look for more related keywords. I can take on keyword and after a half an hour or so, I can have another 1000 or more related keywords for that one term. Now about half of them have low demand numbers but I still keep them, many times after seeing some of these keywords, it may jostle your mind a little to think of some more keywords on another tangent that are still related. Or some of these keywords I find can show you light in a totally different direction for a new idea for a site. This just happened to me the other day, and I am going to be starting to make a website based on something I was not even searching for, but the numbers are very good.
But be careful, you really should get a subscription to WT even if it is only for 1 day. If you use the free trial, this only uses a very small amount of the search tools and does not really give one proper numbers when doing a search.
I want to start another topic asking people what other programs they use for Keyword Search Tools. So I will get that one started fairly quickly.

Thanks,
Duane

[Nell Taliercio]

I use word tracker and inventory. I use the free version of word tracker.