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I'd email help@seomoz.org with your account information and treat this as a bug report and see what they can figure out.

the best way to judge this is just search in Google and you will see different website in top 10 position for these terms, which tells me yes they are two different terms and google wait them differently...

Agreed, i just found it odd that they currently rank for "print and apply" but not for "print-and-apply" it leads me to believe that if we did target one way or another it could influence rankings. I would be intrigued if anyone else has seen this before.

That's good advice. I may have over-optimized just a tad

I've seen keywords separated with - and | and even >, and in my opinion, the separator you use shouldn't affect search rankings.  It may have an impact on click through rates within any given search engine result page, so you should try to find the one that is most visually appealing. Also, in general I like to try to be a bit more creative than "KEYWORD1 | KEYWORD2 | KEYWORD3 - SITENAME".  In my opinion, something like "KEYWORD1 and KEYWORD2 Tips and Advice, at SITENAME" is much better.  It feels less spammy, and I'm convinced results in a higher CTR.  I think most people are trending this way, lately: considering the user a bit more than the search engines.  I don't think you could have said the same thing a few years back.

Awesome! Thank you Anthony and Albin.

Pluralized terms are treated as different words. When I search for "coin" the wiki article is first. When I search for "coins" that same article is still on the first page but at the bottom. Other pages focused on "coins" have more relevancy due to the identical match.

I wouldn't say so, if you use brand terms for a specific anchor text terms, and then you join that up with another factor such as an EMD (exact match domain) factor. Connected with correct on page optimization. Then you need to target only a percentage of the natural links you acquire to have the term within the anchor text.

I tried finding a tool that would automate it for me sometime ago but didn't find it so I simply used excel. I took a list of all major US states and cities and imported to one row. On the right row I used keyword that I wanted to combine with the geo term. Copy pasted both rows (geo+keyword) to get search count.  It took me 20 mins to do it all. Also, if you select 'broad search' for  "music instrument rentals San Francisco" while finding the search count. you will get other search queries as well, like the one you mentioned:"Where to get Instrument rentals in San Francisco" + several other combinations

I would suggest both, since someone might be searching for it while on a trip or visiting the family during the weekend and hence might not be geographically in the town at the time of his/her search.

Are you getting these results when logged in? Or logged out of you Google account. I have found that some times you see crazy data when you are logged out, yet when you log in the data seems a lot better.

We have had some experience recently with just this task. First I would make sure that our on site optimization is correct for local search therefore title tags should be appropriate eg Toyota Car Sales and Service. Also that there is relevant on page local content and also that your meta descriptions have local context. Second, I would follow Rand's direction to getlisted.org which will get you on 5 of the most important local directories, qype, yelp etc. Follow this with any other local directories you can find. These all help with local search rankings. Third build links with local businesses. These local backlinks will help Google localise you and determine  that your car dealership is the 'most popular' in anytown. Fourth Google Places Signup will hopefully mean you will appear google place search Apart from this general link acquisition will help boulster your position.

James thanks for the reply.  I'm wanting to find out the top 3 ranking sites for each of my keywords, not just for 3 competitors.  Currently I have gone to Google and individually ran a search for each keyword and recorded the top 3.  That is very time consuming and looking for an easier way of doing this. Not sure if something like this exists or not?

I have had a quick play with SerpIQ. I thought the following bits were quite interesting: can be used to find related terms and you can then dig down into the keyword difficulty for each keyword provides data on the availability of exact match domains for a keyword keywords can be grouped together to manage the keyword research process I think if the first point could be automated i.e. you give it a keyword it then goes off and finds related keywords and provides difficulty scores for them it could be a lot more useful. However, in terms of usability and usefulness I thought the SEOmoz keyword difficulty tool is far superior and won't be swapping any time soon. Some useful ideas for possible future upgrades for SEOmoz though.

Well, I've been using Nichebot (wordtracker), and it is totally different in terms of keyword phrases and search counts than google tool. That's my concern. Why the BIG difference?

my question was to find out "state level monthly search amount". how do you match state and find state level monthly search amount using Adwords Keyword Tool?  thanks.

And forget about the Meta Keywords tag, it's useless