It's an excellent article overall. I didn't realize the search count include the adSense matches (#4). Searches from Google's partners should still be counted though; presumably the end users search the term on the partners' sites.
That's because #4 is wrong. Looking at my own campaigns, I get WAY more impressions from the content network than Google estimates in the keyword tool.
Also, evaluating your target market based on a single keyword seems pretty silly and meaningless. What about related or synonymous keywords? What about other traffic sources like banner ad media buys?
#4 is not wrong. It's a rule of thumb. It's not 100% correct all the time, but it's the best estimating approach we have. If you have a better one I am all ears.
>> What about related or synonymous keywords?
This post does not go into detail on the full approach for measuring a market. That's detailed in my book and way too long to include in a blog post.
This post simply talks about the 4 most common mistakes people make when doing this kind of research. Nowhere did I indicate your entire market research depends on this single keyword. That would be stupid.
>>What about other traffic sources like banner ad media buys?
There are at least 50 other traffic sources: Twitter, blogging, podcasting, other search engines, magazine ads, TV ads, radio ads, cold calls, direct mail, Facebook pages, Facebook ads...I could go on and on.
None of them offer data that allows you to easily perform market research. Also, unless you are funded many of them are completely out of reach.
Again, Google is not the only source of traffic but it's an easy way to measure market demand.
That rule of thumb is based on false assumptions. Here's actual data for September from a campaign I'm running on both search and content. I took the exact same keywords from my search campaign and copied them into a content network campaign:
Campaign:Clicks:Impressions
Search(+partners):9,738:244,005
Content Network:32,648:7,202,056
Adwords tool estimates about 200,000 local searches for my main keywords.
The Adwords Keyword Tool DOES NOT report impressions from the Content Network as a mesaure of search volume, that is just a fact.
Your method is fundamentally flawed. This process will tell you absolutely _nothing_ useful about the size of your market.
I hope your book does not have any similar errors.
