To all you wordtracker users out there:

I have come across a problem when using wordtracker and I would like to know whether this is something anyone else using the service has come across. I performed a keyphrase research on the site for a client of mine (steps 1 and 2) and ended up with a list of 70 phrases useful and relevant to their site. Upon perfoming a competition search (step 4) I found that the column showing competing websites within one of the SEs is showing the value -1 for all the 70 phrases, which is clearly incorrect. This has happened before on occasions with one or two phrases and with various SEs on the wordtracker list but never so completely across the board.

I have submitted this problem to their support department and am awaiting their response but I am also interested if this is an isolated incident or if anyone else using the service has had an experience similar to this.

Hey,

Yes, this happens from time to time. Below was taken from the site.

If you see a minus one (-1), this means that Wordtracker was unable to determine the number of competing results. You may occasionally get a -1 in a batch of good results. However it is unlikely as Wordtracker reworks zero counts, overloaded engine errors, engine timeouts, etc

If the entire result set is composed of 0's and -1's then that means that the engine has changed its display or is pointing at a different url. Either way, it will appear in our logs and a technician will fix it inside 24 hours.