Hubspot tools vs. Google
Posted August 5th, 2009 by Seantmcvey
I am a marketing consultant and I am interested in the Hubspot software. My buddy has a free trial and it looks great. It seems however that the keyword volume results are way different from Google's keyword tool. Additionally, I find that every keyword tool I use out there give me varying results. Can someone PLEASE clear this up for me? I would like to give my clients the most accurate keyword volumes possible. I don't necessarily need them free, but from what I have heard Google's Keyword tool is the best because they have the most information available to them.
-why are Hubspot's keyword volumes different?
-who's are correct?
**Can someone from the Hubspot/Inbound team please answer this question?
Thank you.
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However...
sankim83 2 years 41 weeks 3 days 4 hours ago
An excerpt from one of Pete Caputa article http://success.hubspot.com/content-library/bid/2648/Use-Keyword-Grader-t... :
To calculate monthly search volume, we basically retrieve estimated paid clicks from Google's API, and then we extrapolate to cover all searches (paid & organic) and extrapolate across search engines based on market share...For instance, it's possible HubSpot will show a lower number of searches for the term "college" than the term "haverford college" because very few advertisers actually bid on broad terms. Since not a lot of people bid, that means estimated clicks is low, and therefore we show a low volume number.
This methodology seems like a flaw of Hubspot's tool. Since it uses only the paid clicks to extrapolate all searches, it underestimates generic terms, which are precisely the kind of terms I want to rank for with my blog (www.satuniversity.org)! Even if Google is working with Google's own numbers (i.e. not Yahoo, Bing, etc), I would still rather use their tool if it includes organic searches. Am I wrong?
Yes. You Are Wrong.
Pete Caputa 2 years 41 weeks 3 days 3 hours ago
I encourage anyone to use as much data as they feel they need to use. I encourage people that care about spending their time wisely to spend their time creating content.
The biases in HubSpot's data are there because of the biases in Google's data. The math goes something like this.
Imperfect data (Google's data) + a handful of variables to correct for some of the imperfections. = Still imperfect (but slightly better) data (HubSpot numbers).
You probably did NOT read this article.
http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/07/15/why-the-google-keyword-tool-is-useless-for-seo-even-with-exact-numbers/
That article talks about how Google's data is extrapolated from ppc as well. It is written by someone who is not connected to HubSpot.
My earlier point is the most critical point for anyone to understand: Do your keyword research, then go create content. Err on the side of spending your time creating great content. Unless you already have a pagerank of 6+. you will generate more traffic from long tail keywords and keyword phrases you didn't anticipate than the ones you try to rank for from your keyword research.
Unless you are sitting in your underwear and building sites in order to make adsense revenue, you should not worry about whether the data is perfect. If you really want to obsess over it, use the 5 different tools that are available to do the research and compare/contrast the numbers they spit out. You will see that all of them are different. (Just make sure you are in your underwear and not wasting billable time for this.)
Then, create content. And build/attract links.
PS. There is more to selecting keywords than just volume. You should also factor in the difficulty of beating the competition. Once you start creating content, you should also track the traffic and rankings of those results, so you can continue to tweak your keyword focus, in order to increase SE traffic.
If you still want to argue the finer points of digits and rounding of imperfect data, here's my final argument.
http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4607/The-Secret-of-Analytical-Marketing-Obsess-Over-Experiments-Not-Data.aspx
Good luck.
No I'm not
sankim83 2 years 41 weeks 3 days 3 hours ago
You keep saying the obvious: don't obsess over keyword research. Of course it would be foolish to spend all my time on keywords and not on building content, links, etc. But when I'm making any decision about my company, I like to make it based on the best data available. So far, you haven't convinced me that Hubspot's algorithm is more accurate than Google's. The article you pointed does NOT state that Google's Keyword Tool relies ONLY on paid traffic. It cites many different sources from which Google collects data, which include not-so-reliable ones like paid traffic from parked domains, but also good ones like organic traffic from Google and other search engines powered by Google. On the other hand Hubspot's tools relies ONLY on paid traffic. I don't go to keywords tools for total volume; I look at the relative volume of different keywords. Even if Google exaggerates the traffic numbers, it still doesn't have as heavy of a paid-traffic bias that Hubspot's formula, which necessarily underestimates generic terms. My blog needs to rank for "college," not "haverford college." San Kim Terra Firma Education www.satuniversity.org
Echooo, Echooo, and Echoooo
Dan Ronken 2 years 41 weeks 3 days 6 hours ago
What Pete just said and learn from my mistakes as well.
I've recently optimized my site and squandered away 10-20 hours messing around and trying to find the perfect keywords. I guess I had the strategy backwards and kept going back and forth back and forth between content creation and then changing my whole post because I though that I found a better keyword to target. Man, I wasted a lot of hours and I'm still worn out from it. ;)
But now I'm making a comeback and simply TAKING ACTION as he emphasized so greatly. I can choose to spend countless hours analyzing my keyword strategy and getting a headache from looking at the screen for so long or I can choose to write a post like this on pull marketing which brought in 8 comments. Now that's something that will cure my headache so why put myself through the pain to begin with? So there's a little anecdotal experience for anyone who decides to read this post, hopefully before they get sucked in the the keyword conundrum.
Well said, Dan!
RickBurnes 2 years 41 weeks 3 days 6 hours ago
It's all about balance.
Determining Keyword Search Volume
Pete Caputa 2 years 41 weeks 3 days 7 hours ago
For people that are new to keyword research, there's a really hard fact that you will eventually come to accept, but will be really hard for you to accept without figuring it yourself.
It is.... noone... I mean noone has perfect data. Even Google. (Good read.)
So, like any scientist or engineer will tell you, you have to use what you have, make decisions, TAKE ACTION, and see how you do. Then, repeat the process.
When I say TAKE ACTION, I mean that you should spend time creating content and building links. Any blogger who's been at it for awhile or any successful seo consultant will tell you, that VOLUME of CONTENT is much more important to seo success than spending time trying to predict VOLUME of search traffic.
As a good rule of thumb, you should spend 2-4 hours up front doing keyword research, spend 10-20 hours creating content. Then, revisit your keyword rankings and research on a monthly basis, spending an hour or so to find new keywords (for more content creation) or optimize existing pages differently. The way to do this is to use Keyword Grader and Page Grader together.
To answer your question more directly, there are a bunch of documents on HubSpot's customer success portal that you should read. (If you haven't started a trial, you can and it'll give you access to the documents.)
Here they are.
Monthly search volume - what it means and how it's calculated. (I believe that we recently tweaked this algorithm and are in the process of updating the document. The data is based off of Google, but we correct it with an algorithm to show more accurate predictions.)
When & Why Keyword Volume is not accurate. (scroll down)
Thanks
Seantmcvey 2 years 41 weeks 3 days 7 hours ago
That was a very helpful reply. I appreciate you time and expertise.