Number of specific Google searches?

February 18, 2010 7:58 PM

Google question: Is it possible to find out how many people are searching using a very specific keyword or phrase (not Google Trends)?

For example, could I type in an address and find out what the popularity of that search is or how many people have searched for it?
Google Trends seems to provide rankings, but is there anything more specific? thanks.

posted by kmavap to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

There maybe a simpler way, but if you have an AdWords account you can set up keywords and it will tell you how many times a day those keywords are likely to be triggered.
posted by alms at 8:14 PM on February 18, 2010

The external Keyword Tool will give you what alms mentioned above, but without the additional overhead of setting up an AdWords account. Obviously they're just giving you estimates rather than exact numbers for any given day, but I think this is as close as Google comes to giving you the info you're looking for.
posted by crinklebat at 11:34 PM on February 18, 2010

Keyword Tool as mentioned gives some number ranges, and Google Insights for Search will give you normalised numbers, but Google doesn't release straight-up search volumes.

Note there's also Trends for Websites; I can't quite tell from your question if that data is relevant.

Microsoft release more detail than Google, e.g. here. Yahoo used to, but I don't have time right now to double-check if they still do.
posted by StephenF at 2:42 AM on February 19, 2010

Oh one other thing: if you're willing to spend money, you can do this by expanding on alms' suggestion. Set up an AdWords account, use the keyword you are interested in, and drive traffic to a site that is related to that keyword. So that should be your site, obviously. And it has to be related or you will run up against Google's automated quality systems. Then, raise the daily budget for your campaign to a large amount to allow your keyword to trigger on all searches (if the budget is too low, Google will stagger delivery).

This is going to be prohibitively expensive on a term like 'mortgages', but if you were interested in a lower-volume, lower-cost keyword in a specific country or region, it could be do-able. Mail me if you decide to go down that route and need help.
posted by StephenF at 2:46 AM on February 19, 2010

In addition to the Adwords keyword tool that crinklebat mentioned Google also has a search based keyword tool (you don't need to fill in the website field, just type in your keywords).
posted by davar at 9:40 AM on February 19, 2010