Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Difference between search volume in KWT and Impressions in GWT
-
Hi there,
Sorry I've been a bit quiet of late, we're going through a huge rebranding exercise as well as staying on top of client work.
Anyway. I've got an issue with keyword research phase of a client remarketing.
Trying to decide which keywords to target (aren't we all?) The client has 3 months of back data in Google Webmaster Tools, which helps us to see Impressions, CTR and actual click-throughs etc.
Now, they rank #1 on Google.com for a certain keyword (logged out, of course).
According to Google Keyword tool (Logged in) there are 2.7million searches per month for this keyword. With the average CTR being 18% for a #1 keyword that should be bringing in 400k visits.
However, take the same keyword in Google Webmaster Tools and the impressions are actually around 1,600 per month with a CTR of 9%.
Different CTR's for different sectors I can accept. What I don't get is the vast difference between the impressions in GWT compared to the alleged search volume coming from the Keyword tool.
Really need to understand this so we can better select keywords and judge approximate traffic expected if ranking #1 for a keyword.
Any help would be really useful. Thank you!
-
This was indeed the problem - such a simple issue, but helps us in future to be wary of that stumbling block
Thanks! -
Ah, that may well be it. I didn't do the first stage keyword research, a colleague did, so we may have to refine it. I will have a look through the data again and will get back to you.
Thanks for the reminder.
-
My best Guess is that when you do the Research in the keyword tool you do not have on "exact" matching. It is often quite silly how large the numbers get if you don't do that.
The ctr of 9% on #1 keyword wouldn't be unusual if there is a Heavy contested key.word With ads above the search result
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does an Apostrophe affect searches?
Does Google differentiate between keyphrase structures such as Mens Sunglasses & Men**'**s Sunglasses? I.e. does the inclusion/exclusion of an apostrophe make any difference when optimising your main keyword/phrase for a page? Keyword explorer appears to give different results..... I.e. no data for Men's Sunglasses, but data appears for Mens sunglasses. So if I optimise my page to include the apostrophe, will it screw the potential success for that page? Thanks 🙂 Bob
Technical SEO | | SushiUK1 -
Google SERPs Show Different Title
Hi Guys, Can anyone please help with my situation. My domain is www.greedybins.com.au. I had title setup in every pages differently, and it has been 2 months since I made the changes. I keep checking by using site:www.greedybins.com.au in search. So far, only 1 title that been show correctly in SERPs. I used SEO Yoast before, I changed to All In One SEO Pack plugin, the titles are changing, but still not accurate as I made it. Somehow Google altered it by itself. I have tried fetch and submit sitemap couple times from Google Search Console. Could anyone please advise?
Technical SEO | | ray.soms0 -
Seeing URL Slugs as search result titles
I've been seeing some search results for my site that look like the first result here, where the URL slug is used as SERP title: https://drive.google.com/a/fitsmallbusiness.com/file/d/0B37y4RslpuY-a0hQYjlJQ0NxeFJicDF6RVlURFVSNFN0aGhB/view?usp=sharing The article title (and Yoast snippet title) are both "28 Press Release Examples From The Pros", but for some reason I'm seeing "press-release-examples" in the search results. I've seen this for multiple articles, and I see it now and then with different articles. I'm aware that Google often changes the titles in search results, but it seems very weird to me that they would opt for just the URL slug here. Thoughts? Has anyone else seen this issue? Any idea what might be causing this? All help much appreciated.
Technical SEO | | davidwaring0 -
Site indexed by Google, but (almost) never gets impressions
Hi there, I have a question that I wasn't able to give it a reasonable answer yet, so I'm going to trust on all of you. Basically a site has all its pages indexed by Google (I verified with site:sitename.com) and it also has great and unique content. All on-page grades are A with absolutely no negative factors at all. However its pages do not get impressions almost at all. Of course I didn't expect it to be on page 1 since it has been launched on Dec, 1st, but it looks like Google is ignoring (or giving it bad scores) for some reason. Only things that can contribute to that could be: domain privacy on the domain, redirect from the www to the subdomain we use (we did this because it will be a multi-language site, so we'll assign to each country a subdomain), recency (it has been put online on Dec 1st and the domain is just a couple of months old). Or maybe because we blocked crawlers for a few days before the launch? Exactly a few days before Dec 1st. What do you think? What could be the reason for that? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | ruggero0 -
Inurl: search shows results without keyword in URL
Hi there, While doing some research on the indexation status of a client I ran into something unexpected. I have my hypothesis on what might be happing, but would like a second opinion on this. The query 'site:example.org inurl:index.php' returns about 18.000 results. However, when I hover my mouse of these results, no index.php shows up in the URL. So, Google seems to think these (then duplicate content) URLs still exist, but a 301 has changed the actual goal URL? A similar things happens for inurl:page. In fact, all the 'index.php' and 'page' parameters were removed over a year back, so there in fact shouldn't be any of those left in the index by now. The dates next to the search results are 2005, 2008, etc. (i.e. far before 2013). These dates accurately reflect the times these forums topic were created. Long story short: are these ~30.000 'phantom URLs' in the index out of total of ~100.000 indexed pages hurting the search rankings in some way? What do you suggest to get them out? Submitting a 100% coverage sitemap (just a few days back) doesn't seem to have any effect on these phantom results (yet).
Technical SEO | | Theo-NL0 -
Target: blank. Does it make an SEO difference?
I've notice many sites MOZ included no longer use the target: blank attribute. I think that's what it's called. Basically when a link on your site opens a new tab in the browser as opposed to replacing the browser window you are in. Given that MOZ think of everything, I would love to hear opinions on this.
Technical SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
How is a dash or "-" handled by Google search?
I am targeting the keyword AK-47 and it the variants in search (AK47, AK-47, AK 47) . How should I handle on page SEO? Right now I have AK47 and AK-47 incorporated. So my questions is really do I need to account for the space or is Google handling a dash as a space? At a quick glance of the top 10 it seems the dash is handled as a space, but I just wanted to get a conformation from people much smarter then I at seomoz. Thanks, Jason
Technical SEO | | idiHost0 -
Link Volume - calculate what you need?
Hi everyone, an interesting question here. How do you determien what link volume you should try and get into your website? What analysis do you do to determine the number of links you feel is right to go into a back-link profiel every month? obviously there is no magic number but its an interesting question to know what others do. Obviously you don't want to build too many or too little. If you have been penalised for bad links in the past and are now back on track - how do you calculate the volume? Do you take links dropping out into consideration?
Technical SEO | | pauledwards0