Google Keyword Tool Showing Local vs. Global Search Volumes

Apr 23, 2009 at 9:34am ET by Barry Schwartz

The Site Visibility blog noticed Google has updated their keyword suggestion tool to show local search volume in addition to global search volume. As you can see from the screen capture below, there are two columns, one for local and one for global.

The local column shows search volume data “specific to your targeted country and language as well as your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu.” While the global column “includes traffic in all countries and languages and is specific to your selection from the Match Type drop-down menu.” For all my tests, either the local column had more search volume then the global column or the same, which really doesn’t seem to make much sense to me.

The last screen shot I took of the Google keyword suggestion tool was on July 2008 and it had a column for search volume for the past month and an approximation for the current month.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

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4 COMMENTS ON Google Keyword Tool Showing Local vs. Global Search Volumes

Cohn, April 23rd, 2009 at 11:54 am ET:

Same counts for both local search volume and global search volume over here Barry.

Don’t see how it will work on the external version of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

CollClark2, April 23rd, 2009 at 5:32 pm ET:

Local Search volume is only for March. Seasonality may cause March to be higher than Global Average.

KeywordIntent.com, April 24th, 2009 at 3:28 am ET:

The problem with the new Local Search Volume is that it does not show the average search volume for the last 12 months in a local area, only the previous month’s data. This is a problem because longtail terms do not have search volume every month and it shouldn’t mean that you ignore those terms because some months there is zero traffic, especially in smaller locations around the world.

On the other hand, I feel I can trust the Local Search Volume numbers more now than before.

IrishWonder, April 26th, 2009 at 8:54 am ET:

It’s previous month local search volume if you select a particular geolocation and average monthly global search volume – which I think is a bit gay. I’d rather have an option to see average local monthly search volume alongside with the previous month’s volumes if I chose a particular location as some markets are seasonal and previous month doesn’t do me much good.

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