Has the keyword planner search volume metric gone crazy?

[AKQA_SEO]

We're seeing this as well. It doesn't seem as simple as plural vs singular.

"MBA" & "Master of Business Administration" now have the same search volume. "MBA" had 110,000 before and "Master of Business Administration" had 2,400. These variations also have 110K searches/mo now: "Masters Business Administration", "Masters of Business Administration", "Master in Business Administration". Seems like they are bucketing those as the same keyword but then "masters in accounting" is different than "masters in accounting".

[AKQA_SEO]

correction..."masters in accounting" vs "masters of accounting". It's Monday and the Warriors lost.

[randfish]

Definitely some odd ones - I think Google may be conflating certain keywords, and removal of the ability to see exact match vs. phrase/broad match is definitley an issue, too. In any case, we're sorta stuck with their data. Moz is collecting some additional search volume information via clickstream sources and including that in our buckets for KW Explorer, but that only applies to the US (and won't give precise numbers since we can only get sampled data).

[Daft.ie]

Hi there

I'm seeing crazy inflated keyword volumes from Adwords KW Planner too. I keep a record of the extracts for these 300 KWs so have files going back to Sept-15

Not the same issue as with plural/singular highlighted by the other but...

1. an inflated "Avg. Monthly Searches (exact match only)" number in June versus all other previous months by 6x in some cases e.g. avg monthly searches for a particular KW was 2,400 up to April and now it's gone to 14,800.

2. And also, Google have also retrospectively updated each of the 12 previous months average search query volumes by keyword.

Here's an example attached. Hope you can read it

Out of the ~300 KWs I track, 40 keywords have 2x'd and higher their average monthly keyword volume. 81 KWs have increased average monthly search volumes by 50%

To me it looks like either it's either a bug (or new method) in how Google count average monthly searches or they haven't updated their KW volumes in this tool in the last 12 months.

PZ0vCDY

[E_F]

If I had to guess, it seems to be an issue with "close keyword variations" which Google use for matching keywords to search terms in Adwords and the planner tool now somehow sums up the total search volume for all these variations. Which makes it looks like search volume has doubled or tripled or more depending on how many variations you're looking at.

Our PPC team is pushing for answers from our GG account manager but so far they say they are not aware of any changes to the tool and "believe the information to be accurate".

Will update here if we learn anything new.

[Daft.ie]

Breaking news on SEW is that Google made a change to the tool last week to combine search variants.Articles belowInstead of showing individual keyword estimates per KW or KW phrase, it now lumps in the data together which means that it will show identical estimates for both both. It's no longer possible to see individual estimates to check highest/lowest volumes anymore. All the data has been changed retrospectively alsohttp://www.thesempost.com/googles-keyword-planner-now-combines-keywords-for-search-volume/https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/29/googles-keyword-planner-tool-just-became-even-more-inaccurate/Adwords Keyword Planner now seems to combine many search variants, including:

• plurals with non-plurals for any word in the keyword phrase
• acronyms with longhand version e.g. SEO + search engine optimiZation + search engine optimiSation
• stemming variants: -er, -ing, -ized, -ed etc keywords (ie. designer, designing, designed)
• words that can be spelled with or without space (ie. car park and carpark)
• words with and without punctuation (ie. kid toys and kid’s toys)

[E_F]

Yes I saw those articles and they're reporting similar findings as this post. Although nothing official yet from Google so I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for this to be a bug...Will be on the lookout for an official update note...

[E_F]

Finally got a reply from the Adwords support team:
“there was a recent change in how average monthly searches are calculated in Keyword Planner and it is now expected that search terms that are close variants to each other will show the same aggregated search volumes”

[Daft.ie]

Thanks E_F. I've not heard anything back from Adwords support in Europe yet.

Wouldn't it be great if Google would also explain why they changed the methodology as the tool is no longer fit for the purpose it was originally designed for?:-)

[E_F]

Couldn't agree more!

[amirbt]

Hi,

It is the same with Hebrew search phrases same s.v. for singular and plural.

The odd thing is that the search results for each are different. So I don't understand the logic here on Googles side, if you look at them as the same meaning, why are the search results different? they should aslo be exactly the same!

[amirbt]

Another thing on the subject I noticed is:

For some phrases it will report the aggregate search volume, thus equal s.v. for the singular and plural. e.g. tel aviv hostels and tel aviv hostel show each a s.v. of 1300.

But "Jerusalem hostel" (s.v. reported - 880) and "Jerusalem hostels" (170) don't!!!

So W.T.F. Google trying to do here? Make us realize that they really really don't want us to use k.w.p. data? First take away the broad s.v. data leaving only the lesser valuable data of the exact, then having the bucket aggregation .... What's next? Don't they want us to show the true potential in Google searches to digital marketing clients??? Kind of hard when you have to either give false inflated numbers and say that there is no true accurate number these are all estimates that might even be very far from the real numbers.

[E_F]

Well, it's annoying.

We actually got some feedback from our Adwords support saying "the Engineering team is looking to improve/change this behavior as feedback indicates it is confusing for customers. But for the moment, no details yet on what/how it will change."

So let's see, I suppose the more complaints they get from the PPC community the more likely they are to roll things back.