: Why am I getting far less traffic than the Google Keywords traffic estimate suggests? I identified a search term that is quotes as having millions of global searches per month on Google keywords

@Alves908

Maybe the "millions of searches" is a very rough estimate.
Maybe 900,000 of that million is from uzbekistan, not the US.
Maybe users find your SERP entry less useful than others, and click other competing
links.
Perhaps the search term isn't an exact match, but a partial match, and you are page 1 on the partial match.
Perhaps you are competing on a very specific term, e.g. "Zappos", against Zappos.com, in which case you are fighting an uphill battle for drawing away their clicks.


The possibilities are endless with a question of this nature (especially the original title). I suggest using tracking analytics (google or otherwise) to pin down where your current incoming customers on that term are coming from and where they aren't.

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@Angie530

The Google keyword tool is designed to solicit new advertising business for Google and, as a result, may be a little counter-intuitive unless you are searching on the exact term (by default, it will perform a broad match).

Consider the difference (for the sake of advertising or optimization efforts) represented by the results below:

recipe (broad match - includes "recipes", "casserole recipe", "where can i find italian food recipes")


Competition: low
Global monthly searches: 101,000,000
Local monthly searches: 55,600,000


[recipe] (exact matches - includes only "recipe" as a search term)


Competition: low
Global monthly searches: 165,000
Local monthly searches: 60,500


As you can see, optimizing for (and achieving #1 rank) for the exact phrase does not confer the same benefits that ranking #1 for all terms which contain "recipe" would (and what an ambitious effort that would be)

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