Larger search engine keywords database from Wordtracker

June 5 2001, updated June 6.

Planet Ocean reports that Wordtracker has released a new and larger version of its search engine keywords database. Wordtracker is a tool used by webmasters in their efforts to target popular search queries.

While searchers are struggling hard to formulate queries that may bring in relevant search results, webmasters are trying equally hard to optimize their pages for keyword phrases that can bring in relevant visitors.

Again and again we find that what we would think of as obvious queries are not used by the majority of searchers. If you were to search for a site like Pandia, what query would you use: "Internet searching", "Web searching" or "search engines"?

Choosing the right keyword phrases may mean the gain or loss of hundreds -- or even thousands -- of visitors, and visitors equal income in the commercial parts of the Net.

A popular tool among webmasters is the free GoTo suggestion tool, which lets visitors find out how many searchers have searched for particular keywords during the last month. By comparing the number of queries you may get an impression of how popular a particular term is. Unfortunately GoTo is used by a lot of webmasters for this purpose, which makes the results a bit unreliable.

In comes Wordtracker, a service that collects its data from two of the largest metasearch engines in the world (i.e. engines that query several of the main search engines at once). The Wordtracker database includes all the keywords from Metacrawler and Dogpile.

According to the Wordtracker Web site metacrawlers were chosen because they provide an unbiased view of searches.

Wordtracker makes the assumption that metasearch engine results will be comparable to ordinary search engine results, arguing that that a user (especially a new user) will see a search box as a search box. "It matters not the technology underneath." This is probably a fair assumption.

Actually, Wordtracker argues that metasearch results may be even more accurate than traditional search engines:

"Millions of people check their web site rankings in the major engines every day using software position checking robots. They can quite easily distort the results and give a false impression. Words that you believe are highly targeted may result in very little traffic."

Dogpile and Metacrawler provide some 175 million keywords per month, adding up to a new database of some 350 million queries. In comparison the old Wordtracker index contained 42 million keywords. All keywords older than two months will be dropped. Furthermore, there is a new search facility for finding common misspellings, improved support for finding statistics for plural variations of keywords, new listings of alternative search queries and more.

At the Wordtracker home page you will find a ticker presenting an uncensored list the most popular search queries, and you may order "instant" reports on the ranking of your targeted keyword phrases.

Wordtracker offers a free trial, while prices varies from USD 5.95 for one day's use to USD 140 for a year long subscription.

Wordtracker
GoTo suggestion tool
Pandia Search Engine Optimization Gateway
Planet Ocean
Metacrawler
Dogpile

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