I've been professing the gross inaccuracies of Google's search estimator tools for years. I have never found a satisfactory answer from Google, and as illustrated in this post, I get just as much push back from the general marketing community.

It would be one thing if the estimates were just wrong (which they are - I've run hundreds of test to measure their accuracy), but it's doubly frustrating when you come across logical contradictions like those you've addressed that don't seem to ever be resolved.

If Google wanted to clear this up it would be this simple: provide documentation of how the numbers are arrived at outside of the vagueness of two sentences.

Anyway - I completely agree with you. Thanks for the post.

If you know how to use the data and what you can use it for you can gain very valuable insights - that is my experience and opinion.

However you are knowingly publishing wrong information here ("Well, to be fair I do link to a follow up post in which I say maybe I'm talking rubbish.").

The Google Adwords keywords tool is NOT useless in the UK!

As with any other tools and data you need to know how to read it and how to use it.

You should take this post down or change it... the same goes for the other post you are referring to.

With all the questions raised here about the validity of your conclusion I would recommend that you change the heading and text of the post.

As it stands now it is highly misleading, and there is enough disinformation on the net about this stuff as it is...

Just my two cents...

Having said that, it's definitely not accurate....

If you've ever used it to estimate traffic and then got a number one ranking, you'd be amazed at how little the traffic you get resembles the figures you get from the tool.

Bt it if works for you, then good luck with it.

It looks like you have been misinterpreting the Google keyword tool results in this and previous posts of yours about the Google keyword tool.

Pete Lovick has explained it correctly.

Folks - the local results are based on IP address of the searcher.

Don't expect the results to be accurate - they are a sample of all searches, and are statistically valid when compared to other data provided by Google that is gathered in the same way, if the sample is large enough. Don't trust small numbers for obscure searches. Watch the trends, and look at relative search volumes rather than exact numbers.

Do some real tests - not just looking at what the keyword tool tells you for different countries, but what your Adwords ads or organic search results get in terms of clicks. Once you have a reasonable amount of data to look at ("reasonable" will depend on your organic ranking or adwords spend, and actual search volumes) you'll be able to estimate what ranking for a particular search term will mean in terms of visitors to your website. After all, that is what you are interested in doing if you are using the keyword tool. It is a tool, and should be used for the job it was designed to do.

There is no "perfect" keyword tool. All are subject to some bias, and looking at multiple tools will probably just be more confusing than informative. I've found the Google keyword tool to provide reliable data - it is based on the largest sample of actual internet searches as Google has the lions share of the search market.