It has been an interesting experience reading the reactions and comments about the changes at Google Keyword Tool.

Here are a couple of common questions and some comments…

Why is Google keyword volume count so different from the counts at some of the third party tools?

Of course it will be different. None of the third party tools ever had access to Google search database. The third party tools were based on data from some of the meta crawlers (a tiny percentage of the actual search volume) and local ISPs. Google is the most widely used search engine. Their data is much more likely to be relevant and useful.

Google says there are 1800 searches per month for this phrase. But I am ranked #1 for that phrase and I don’t see that many searches!

Any one who searched is not going to always click the top ranked result. That will depend on what shows up in the search result title, the displayed snippet, what the other results show, what the user is actually looking for and so on.

Also, the counts displayed on Google tool are based on a number of factors like the geographical location, the keyword match type (phrase, exact, broad), etc.

The Google results are inflated by a factor of "N"

Any analysis for checking the accuracy requires that you know exactly what percentage of users will click on the top ranked result. You can’t base such an analysis on one person checking his AdWord account for a few keywords and comparing the click throughs with the Google search volume counts.

Over time there will be a better understanding of how accurate the Google search counts are, but 1 or 2 days is certainly not enough to make an authoritative statement. There is no evidence at this point to prove that Google is inflating the results. As already pointed out, the search counts are based on factors like the user location, type of keyword match etc.

One of the most common problems on the Internet is the willingness of people to just cut and paste whatever they read into their own blogs and web pages. No one bothers to check if the information they are spreading is true or even reasonable.  If a well known blogger posts an opinion you can expect to see the same repeated all over the net as a "fact"!