How to Estimate US Search Volume for any Phrase

The age old question that everyone asks, “But is anybody searching for ‘xyz’?” haunts many in this profession of search engine advertising.

So instead of saying to your potential client, “Oh yes there is huge demand for xyz”(while thinking in the back of your head… “gosh I hope I’m right or I’ll never get another project from this company” - How about replying: “Based on data from Microsoft we estimate that there are 3,355 searches for xyz every month in the US.”?

Here’s how it’s done:

Step 1. Login to your MSN paid search account. Click on the “Research” tab, then for this illustration only enter the phrase ‘physical therapist jobs’; then finally click “Find Keywords”. You will see that 210 searches were performed on the MSN for ‘physical therapist jobs’ last month.

Step 2. Based on Hitwise.com data , we see that MSN accounts for 6.26% of US search engine queries. We want to estimate what the total monthly US search engine queries are for this phrase, so we divide the 210 searches per month by MSN’s current percentage of the market share(6.26).

Step 3. If you round to 6 digits, your calculator should show: 33.5463 . This is 1% of the US search engine volume for the term ‘physical therapist jobs’. To get an estimate of the entire US search volume for the term ‘physical therapist jobs’, we multiply 33.5463 by 100. You now know that there are roughly 3,355 US queries per month on search engines for the phrase ‘physical therapist jobs’.

Step 4. You can now say to your client with integrity and confidence, “Based on data from Microsoft, we estimate that there are 3,355 queries for the phrase ‘physical therapist jobs’ on search engines per month in the US.”

For those of you who are interested, here is the equation:

Current MSN search volume = MSN
Current MSN market share = share
Total US search engine queries = Total

MSN
share X 100 = Total