Overture VS. Wordtracker

[udcruises]

What is everyones opinion on which one of these search term suggestion tools is the most accurate? When I search a keyword phrase in overture it shows a very high figure ( I guess meaning how many people searched for this phrase), When I search a keyword phrase in Wordtracker it is much, much lower. I had one keyword phrase show 29,565 in Overture & 1,052 in wordtracker. I am trying to be careful when picking my keyword phrases because my budget is limited so if I go with this phrase & overtures figures are correct my money would be gone in an hour. Which ones figures are the most accurate ( I know neither one is totally accurate). Thanks for any opinions.

[french dread]

greetings,
beware with overture tool for some keywords i noted that results were biased by ranking softwares for some semi-popular keywords or other than english keywords.
so the best is to multiply your sources for keyword popularity: overture, wordtracker, google adwords, lycos etc...and then make your own opinion

[kneelsit]

Hi udcruise. You need to take overture's figures as highly suspect I would stick with Wordtracker. and do as French suggests.

Having said that however, I have been getting fairly good results from Overture on a number of my keywords listed with them. A tip while I am on this topic:- If your competition is bidding say 9c. then put in your bid at 8c. After all position 4 or 5 is just as good as No. 1.

[Advisor]

I find that WordTracker estimates are very high, so if Overture is showing even higher estimates, I would not believe them!

I don't use the exact numbers in WT for anything. I just use the list of various keywords as a relative list. That is, which phrases are used more than others. The numbers really don't mean much to me, but are only a guide.

For some clients with phrases that are not used a whole lot, the numbers will be very, very low. But I can still get an idea of the way the phrases are typed in. That's what is valuable about WordTracker in my opinion.

Jill

[Kal]

What Jill said. Plus I don't really look at the "count" figure as much as the KEI (keyword effectiveness indicator). I am more interested in how many other sites are competing for the keyphrase than how many people are searching for it. If I can find keyphrases for my clients that have a nice balance between highly searched on AND a high KEI (lower competition) across 3 or more engines, then I am more likely to use those keyphrases.

[Web Diversity]

I'm led to believe that the reason the Overture figures are higher are because of the impact on results of automatic checking.

Wordtracker has always been accurate, they have no incentive to inflate their figures. I'd far rather have an under-estimate on likely traffic on Wordtracker and over-estimate on Overture, than the other way round.

That being said there will always be a margin for error which needs to be factored into traffic predictions.