Keyword Research In Google - using quotes and without

So, I was searching for "valentines gifts" as I know it gets tons and tons of searches now for valentines day (I was initially going to do this niche but I was and am busy with other stuff so I'm not now).

Anyway, when I search for just valentines gifts I get 200,000 results. But when I search for "valentines gifts" using quotes I get 800,000.

I'm really confused here, I thought the latter one was meant to give fewer results as it's searching for sites optimized for that keyword.

So, which one should I trust? Is this phrase with a 200,000 or a 800,000 competition ?

 

Yeah you got it. Those estimates are a bit broken. What you can do in such situations is do the same research in Yahoo and MSN to figure out a more realistic number. However, whichever is more accurate your competition looks huge to me.[]

Another tip on what to do when you suspect the broken estimtes:
Go to the last page of results, for example. The estimates are going to change once you change the page and most probably when you make Google go deeper to the results the estimates are better. Also, look at the exact results on the last page. In case the results on the last page seem quite unrelated, some of the search words missing - you have less then 1000 competing pages nevermind what the estimates say.

Now, what I believe has to do with wrong estimates, and more importantly, what can make you think wrong is the apostrophy sign. Keyword tools such as Overture, Wordtracker filter that sign so you cannot differentiate between "valentines gifts" and "valentine's gifts" phrases.

 

Right, so basically there is no way to know for sure? .

I also don't like to use Overture or wordtracker for keyword research. Google trends does a good enough job for me, and it's also most accurate and the best for seasonal keywords.

 

Google Trends is great. However, they don't give a number of searches so I still use other tools.

 

Is there a tool that allows you to type in your url and it will tell you what keywords you are ranked for?

Not a tool that you type in the keywords and find out your ranking- I already have this.

 

you may try this , Google zeitgeist, google adwords and yahoo buzz

 

Ive also come accross this before where the quoted are in fact larger results.

Also ive searched straight after, say in yahoo and noticed a massive difference in the amount of results, like tens of millions more, someone said to me before you will always get much more results in google and i said thats not the case, in yahoo its often huge numbers.

 

My idea for this niche would be to do "valentines day gifts" or something like that.... limit the niche down to words that people won't use. I probably showed up in the "valentines day" search because i wrote a blog on my personal blog about valentines day.

Wordtracker isn't the best, but it's a good indication of highly searched terms... and a great niche idea creator. I may try to snipe the "valentines day poems" niche.