Are Google stats WRONG?

[denemante]

Hey all,

I've had analytics running for some time. Also, my site moves between the #1 and #2 positions for a very solid keyword phase on Google. We'll just say that term is "deck painting". It's been this way for more than a year.

Yahoo's keyword tool reports that about 1500 people have searched for that same term thus far in Jan. Google's tool doesn't show actual numbers - but the "competition" for the phases is very high. Since I think about 6X as many people use Google search - I'd think the total number of people having searched for "deck painting" in Jan on Google would be at least 1500 - but maybe even 6X that.

Regardless - in Analytics - it shows that I had just 291 visits in January - and about 200 from Google searches.

So my site is #1 or #2 for a very searched, very popular keyword phases - and presumably - 1000s of people search for it each month. But I only get 200 visits after all that?

One final note - the description and such that appears in the SERPs for my site is stellar - quite similar to those around me, but is cleaner and includes "award winning". So it's not like people are seeing me at #1 or #2 and passing on my listing for some reason. That wouldn't make sense.

So why such low traffic from such a high ranking for an important term?

[AussieWebmaster]

are you talking organic? if ther are 1000 searches a month and you get 200 that is 20% - great result given average for a number one is around 10% or less

[beu]

Chances are better that Google Analytics is not implemented properly. What percent of your traffic is from "direct traffic"?

[denemante]

16% is direct traffic.

[beu]

Is it possible another site with information about yours ranks high and that folks click through it and to your site?

What are your sources for traffic? Sites, search or other?

[AussieWebmaster]

16% is low... how much is paid search

[denemante]

Zero is paid search. We haven't run AdWords in some time.

Over the last 5 months, 65.5% of our traffic is from Google organic. 18% is direct. The rest are all 1% or less.

Here's another twist. I stated that I got 200 visits from Google this month. When I looked at the keywords people used - the hot/popular term I noted (for which Yahoo says over 1500 people searched for this month - surely more on Google), only 20 came into my site from it.

Thus - I'm #1 or #2 on Google for a very hot phrase that is searched on at least 1500+ times or more per month - but only 20 people entered my site after searching for that phase?

[AussieWebmaster]

well what are your title tags and descriptions? is the listing in the serps your's or taken from dmoz and may not be appealing???

[denemante]

Good thought - by my title tags and description, and the way my listing appears in the SERPS looks sweet. Similar to those around me - but IMHO, even more appealing. So there's definitely nothing that looks bad there - it actually looks really good.

All I can think is that the keyword popularity tools lie (like Yahoo's/Overtures keyword selector tool) and there really aren't that many people searching for my phrase.

[AussieWebmaster]

Okay have you had other people search for the term and see what your placements are...

Possibly you see a good spot in your area and in others it is off the front page... happens

[denemante]

You mean datacenters? Yeah, nationally we're still #1 or #2, and have been for awhile.

Does anyone know of another resource like Yahoo/Overture keyword selector too where it shows REAL numbers of actual searchs? Google's version wrapped into AdWords only shows volume - not numbers. I'd be interested to see what the actual searches were for my keyword phrase in question on Google.

[AussieWebmaster]

I use AdWords and do a traffic estimator where my bid is huge

[jewboy]

seobook has a great tool to predict search volume - it aggregates data from yahoo, google, wordtracker, nichebot, and other sources. remember, many times these numbers are often very very off.