When Google adwords tool or overture keyword tool gives you a keyword suggestion with the number of searches, is that number talking about people who use quotes ( "" ) around their search, or are they just typing in the keywords? The reason for asking is using a certain search phrase on google with quotes, my site is on the first page. But when that same phrase is typed in without quotes, my site is among the millions of others and I can't even find it in the search results. According to google and overture, my keyword phrase gets a pretty good amount of searches per month, but if those are searched without quotes, then none of those searchers would find my page.
Google adwords tool and overture kwd tool shows keywords, which people type into searchbox. As they type keywords without "" , it means that those results are for keywords without "".
I like the keywords tools from MSN adcenter that provides data about the demographics of the people who are searching for specific keyword with their age and gender including number of search and forecast.
you can use exact match in the google keyword tool to see how many people are searching for that exact term. Otherwise the search volume is only showing searches that include the keyword(s) in the phrase. It is always recommended that you use exact match to see true search volume for your term. Pharse is another good one as it shows searches that used you keyword phrase in that exact word order within the search. ie: if you keyword was "best keyword tool" using phase volume in google will show results of people who used that in their search like: "what is the 'best keyword tool' online" get it?