Can really long tail keywords with lots of searches be trusted ?

[alanwebninja]

Sorry to jump the gun, but i've noticed quite a few fairly long keyword phrases cropping up in KeywordToolExternal which Market Samurai backs up & i'm wondering if there is something wrong or the numbers can be beleived.

It goes a little like this:

I do an exact match search on "Underwater Kickboxing" and get back a page of 1 - 5 word results, however in position 4 I may get something like this

[kickboxing]
[kick boxing]
[underwater kickboxing]
[Underwater Kickboxing as taught by ed dale in the 2005 thirty day challenge]
[kickboxing school]
[kickboxing schools]

If pos # 1 had 30,000 searches, the really long tail result might have 5,400 searches with almost no competing pages due to the length of the phrase.

So are 5400 people really typing in the 13 word long tail, or is this an anomaly ?
It's occuring quite frequently across a wide range of mostly physical product searches.

Thoughts would be appreciated as it may impact on my choice of project for the Challenge & there's no time to test.

Thanks,

Alan.

[Grahunt]

Are you confusing searches with search results?

[alanwebninja]

No Mate,

Monthly searches on "exact match" = 8100 broad match search results = 4340 Screenshot http://screencast.com/t/ODIxNDE0YjA

Not sure what to think. Can't beleive 8100 people per month are all typing in an obscure 10 word search term, although it is a bundle of product names, so maybe it's in some offline advertising & people are typing what they read in a magazine or newspaper article.

Will give it a bash & check if it gets traffic.

[kyleoliveiro]

Have you compared the results with other tools? (e.g. Market Samurai)

[Jimmie]

It's just my gut feeling, but looking at the keyword just above with the same amount of "Global Monthly Searches", it would seem that the long tail keyword is a byproduct of that word. I would think the long tail keyword is specifically because of some promotion or event going on.

Try going to Google to see how many people are actually paying for those "keywords", you will likely find that it is not a profitable one.

Let me know what you find out. That's interesting.

[DeanRichards]

One of the things you have to know about Google is that they always think they know more than you do and you can't force them to do anything, even by using their "rules." In other words they always interpret what you put into a search box or into one of their tools and using quotes or brackets won't stop them from deciding for themselves what you really want. That's why the ultra long tail is showing the same results as the shorter phrase, because Google has decided that people using the ultra long tail want the same thing as people using the shorter phrase and so they're just ignoring all the "extra" words and serving up the results for the shorter phrase. When you use quotes or brackets, it is just a suggestion to Google of what you want, it doesn't stop them from changing what you want into what they think makes more sense.

This post on the Google Blog talks about how they always, always interpret everything.

[Dan Raine]

It is very unlikely that a ten word long tail is getting those number of searches. We have some interesting data on long tails with five words plus here at The Edge and as soon as the report is written I will put it up here at The Challenge.

Dan

[kevinw1]

I've seen this too, especially with long product names. I have a suspicion that it has something to do with either

a) G's "auto completion" feature: someone starts typing in a short search phrase, G brings up the long detailed one in the auto-suggest box, and the person chooses it since that describes exactly what they want.

b) the use of G search on large ecommerce sites: the auto-complete works there too and it's especially likely that someone who starts typing in a brand name will pick the exact model they are interested in if it comes up. For example, if I start typing "cuisinart" in the search box at Amazon, one of the choices in the autocomplete list is "cuisinart stainless steel griddle & panini maker".

These are speculations only, but they are a possible mechanism for people to search on these long phrases without actually typing them in letter by letter.

Will be very interested to see your data Dan!