Google Keyword Tool Showing Local vs. Global Search Volumes

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.