Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Tool – Shocking Results Will Make You Steer Clear
We often take a look at the free keyword tool provided by Wordtracker over at labs.wordtracker.com. It can provide some useful information about actual questions people are typing into the search engines and if you use it wisely enough, you could always write an article or blog post posing the question and then answering it, whilst possibly standing a good chance of getting a decent ranking for that post. The more longtail you go, the far easier it is to optimise for.
A couple of years ago though, I was innocently browsing the Wordtracker tool and discovered some shocking results. It asks you to type in a ‘single or short keyword’ and I typed in ‘home’ (at the time I believe I was looking for home related stuff like home improvement etc). What did Wordtracker return to me? Take a look:
To say I was shocked was an understatement. The worst part is that when I searched this a few years ago, it was at the top of the results for ‘home’ and even 2 years later its still in the top 20 for the number of times this question has been asked. Do people really ask this? A clear sign of worrying times, but also I have to question the accuracy of Wordtracker. Yes, we know it is labs.wordtracker.com which is still very much ‘in development’ as they call it (although it has seemingly been like this for a number of years now) but surely someone needs to take another look at this search data? Of all the ‘home’ related questions you can think of, surely No.13 on the image above is the last thing people would ever type into a search engine?
Well, Wordtracker want my feedback. I gave it to them.
I also checked the Wordtracker Q&A community to see if anyone else had highlighted this shocking result to them, but no-one else has. That’s alarming in itself!
Can we really trust any of these so-called keyword tools? After doing some extensive research of all the various ones, from SEMRush to Keyword Discovery, I still find myself sticking with the Google keyword tools. Even if people are typing horrific phrases into the search engines like the Wordtracker tool highlighted above, at least we don’t feel horrified when we search ‘home’ related phrases in the Google tools. Plus, let’s remember that there are many keyword tools out there that actually just pull their data from Wordtracker.
To be honest, I wouldn’t want my search data coming from anything Wordtracker related if it’s showing us results like the above.
Tags: free keyword tool, google keyword tool, keyword tools, keywords, wordtracker, wordtracker labs
3 Responses to “Wordtracker’s Free Keyword Tool – Shocking Results Will Make You Steer Clear”
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Hi Carly, It’s true that some of the keywords one sees while doing research can be a surprise to say the least (and certainly not a pleasant one in this case), and Wordtracker does its best to filter out keywords that are generally considered offensive - and we’re largely successful with this. However, with any system there can be keywords that slip through the net - it’s impossible to look at each one individually, and I’m sorry you were offended. On a technical note, I did a little more research into that particular keyword, and found that (disturbingly enough) there are hundreds of pages optimised for that term - the sad truth is that there’s no accounting for what some people will choose to create or search for on the Internet. What I can do is speak to my colleages here at Wordtracker about how we filter keywords, and look at getting that particular keyword put behind a filter so that it’s not stumbled over by other unsuspecting users. I’d be sorry to think that this would put you off using our tools completely, and I’m glad that you’ve flagged this up - I’ll look into this in more detail tomorrow when I have more time, but if you have any other questions or comments, please feel free to direct them to support@wordtracker.com. Do get in touch if you’d like to discuss this any further. All the best, Mal
Mal - Wordtracker Customer Support says:
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Hi Mal Many thanks for your prompt and detailed response - my main concern was that someone unassumingly searching for questions related to the innocent subject of ‘home’ would find this disturbing question so high up! I appreciate that people search for some rather obscure terms, but I think this one is definitely something that we don’t want highlighting to us! The filter suggestion is a good idea, and it would be great to see this feature developed. In the meantime, i will probably still use WordTracker from time to time, as it can highlight some really good terms for blog posts etc, but i still stand by the fact it won’t form a basis for any specific keyword research for our clients until we see some improvements with the tool. Kind Regards Carly
Carly says:
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Hi Carly, Just a quick update here for you - I’ve been speaking with our team here, and that particular keyword is to be filtered out - the update will most likely go out today, Tuesday 14th. Please feel free to let us know if you have any other comments about any of our tools - we can be reached at support@wordtracker.com. All the best, Mal
