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Honestly, dealing with any kind of tech support or help desk is sometimes frustrating, but dealing with Google Adwords support is probably one of the most frustrating experiences in life. I wonder if they planned it that way? Waiting 3 days for an answer to a question, and then have that answer come straight from the online help files, is a complete waste of office space, a computer, a desk, a chair and the human being using it. Oh yea, and me even asking the question.

In my previous post I wondered if the Google Keyword Tool search volume feature was giving accurate results because of large discrepancies between what it was showing for volume and what other very popular tools reported. I inquired to Google Adwords support giving them an opportunity to respond and possibly clear up the matter, but as usual they’ve managed to dodge the issue completely with a canned response. Here’s my email below followed by their robotic reply:

Hello,

I see that the Google Keyword Tool now reports on approximate search volume of keywords, but they seem to be much higher that what other keyword research tools around the net are reporting.

For example, Google is reporting the term ‘apartment rentals’ has a June search volume of 673,000 searches, but the tool at http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html is reporting 4,786 for the same time period. I was wondering if you have any insight on this apparently large discrepancy?

Thanks for your assistance,

Alan LeStourgeon

Pretty straight forward I would think. Hello mama Google, can you help me clear this up?

Here’s their response. Is this an RTFM answer or not?

Hello Alan,

Thank you for writing in. I understand that you would like to know why there are discrepancies in the keyword traffic as shown by your AdWords Keyword tool and the external keyword tools.

Please note that the AdWords keyword tool displays traffic based on Google’s performance statistics for your keyword results. Data includes keyword search volume, search volume trends, and predicted cost and ad position on the Google Network. This is the reason there are bound to be discrepancies between the data as shown in the AdWords Keyword tool and the other external keyword traffic estimating tool.

To know more about the Keyword tool features, please visit
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=25109

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation.

(name removed to protect identity of Google help entity living near Earth’s core)

What? What the flip kind of a response is that? No explanation like maybe it’s cumulative searches with those terms in all inquiries, or we’re still in beta trying to sort out data, or yea dude, you may have a point there, we’ll check into that.

Instead, it’s the typical response of a help desk that feels they’re bothered by questions rather than being there to actually lend a hand and help the peons figure out something. What does “search volume trends, and predicted cost and ad position on the Google Network” have to do with my freaking question? I didn’t ask anything about predicted cost or ad position and that data doesn’t even show up when you are inquiring into search volume. Someone just copied and pasted text from the link above to give me an answer.

So there you have it, nothing made any clearer in trying to figure out why Google reports 140 times more traffic for a keyword than someone else does. Once again, another frustrating episode in dealing with all things Google.

Google’s new motto: “We are Google, Please Don’t Bother Us.”