Now you have a good list of keyword phrases. But just because these terms are related to your Web site doesn’t mean they’ll do you much good. The real questions are…
Note
Are people searching on this term? And if so, how often?Here’s how to find out.
Click on a term in one of the lists on the left side of the window.
Wordtracker looks through its database of over 300 million searches.
Wordtracker finds searches that included the term you clicked on, and displays up to 300 in a list on the right side of the window.
No result? Occasionally Wordtracker displays an empty list. That may simply means that nobody is searching on the term you clicked upon. In some cases it may be because the Adult filter is set to either 'Remove dubious' or 'Remove Offensive', and the term is one regarded as adult or offensive.
What does the list contain?
Keyword: A search term, containing your keyword or keyword phrase, that has been typed into one or more of Wordtracker’s partner search engines.
Count: The number of times the term appears in Wordtracker’s database. For instance, if the number is 144, that means the search term was typed into Wordtracker’s partner search engines 144 times.
Predict: An estimate of how often the search term is used, in all Internet search systems, every day. People search using Wordtracker’s partner search engines around 6M times a day, but that’s still a relatively small subset of the total searches on all Internet search engines. So Wordtracker extrapolates, and comes up with an estimate of how often the term is used throughout all search engines.
IMPORTANT: Predict is merely an estimate. Actual search frequencies may be higher than Wordtracker’s Predict numbers (though they’re unlikely to be lower). What’s important, though, is the relative number. A keyword with a Predict number of 3,000 is definitely much more important than one with a Predict number of 1,000.
Dig: Click the little shovel icon, and the contents of the table are replaced; you’ll now see just those search terms that include the words in the search term on that line. For instance, click on the shovel icon on the golf putters line, and you’ll see entries such as top weighted golf putters, odyssey golf putters, bettinardi golf putters, golf putters new, golf clubs penn putters, penn golf clubs and putters, and so on.
Entering Words Directly
You don’t have to use Wordtracker’s Lateral and Thesaurus search to help you “brainstorm” your preliminary keyword list. You can, if you wish, search the Wordtracker database of search terms directly.
Advanced Search Options
There are several search options you can use if you wish, though most Wordtracker users do not use nor need these specialized options. You’ll find these advanced controls at the bottom left of the screen.
The Choose Database drop-down list box allows you to select advanced search functions. The first five options define how Wordtracker searches through the database containing the MetaCrawler.com and Dogpile.com search terms. In all cases Wordtracker removes unnecessary characters such as +, -, and ". The database choices then have other effects, as shown in the following table.
| Remove + - " etc. | Returns Plural | Returns Singular | Returns Exact Term Only | Returns all Case Forms | Combine case forms | Forward stemming | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compressed |  | | | | | ||
| Compr'sive | | | | | | ||
| Simple | | | | | |||
| Exact | | | | ||||
| Precise | | |
- Remove + - " etc.:
- Various punctuation characters are removed from the search term and won’t appear in the search results.
- Returns Plural:
- Results include plurals; enter golf club and Wordtracker also returns results for golf clubs
- Returns Singular:
- Results include plurals; enter golf clubs and Wordtracker also returns results for golf club
- Returns Exact Term Only:
- Results include nothing but the term you enter. Enter golf club and Wordtracker returns only the results for golf club; it won’t find other phrases that include the term, such as used golf clubs and golf club clones.
- Returns all Case Forms:
- Returns matches regardless of case. Enter golf and Wordtracker returns results for Golf, golf, GOLF, GOlf, and so on.
- Combines Case Forms:
- Combines results for different case forms into one result. Wordtracker will return results for Golf, golf, GOLF, and Golf, but will combine the numbers into one entry, golf.
- Forward Stemming:
- Wordtracker will “word stem” to the right. Search for hello and Wordtracker returns results for hellokitty and, helloween, but not othello.
The last option defines which database is used.
Overture: This option allows you to search the Overture.com database. This is useful if your keyword project is primarily for use in optimizing an Overture Pay Per Click campaign. (Sometimes the Overture system is offline, in which case Wordtracker is unable to access keywords when you search.)
Note that if you search Overture, any keywords you select are added to a separate list from the normal Wordtracker (MetaCrawler/DogPile) list. Wordtracker does not merge the two lists, but maintains two separate lists.