Digging around online, I found out that the almighty G is handing out keyword search results..... supposedly they're actual numbers.

Just log into your adwords account, and use the Keyword Tool.

I did it myself, and found some pretty amazing results, but haven't looked much deeper to find out how accurate it is.

Anyone else notice this?

Scratch that... I don't think you need an adwords account, so it's even better.

I just did this search, and clicked on the "Keyword Tool" link.

I've been using Google Analytics. It tracks everything on your site where your traffic's coming from what country what city's.   It tells you which search engines or directories people are clicking. As well as your keywords. As a matter-of-fact there's so much information it's overwhelming.
But to sign up to you have to be the owner of your site.

Not quite on topic, but whatever.

DON, I think you misunderstood what Stitch was talking about.  This tool lets you research key words or phrases to find out which ones to target on your site.  It's not about the keywords you already have on your site, but the keywords you could use to increase traffic.  This way you can find out which words/phrases are searched the most, and maybe which have the least competition.

Nice spot Stitch- perfect timing for us to (just looking to get into Adwrods)

So much better then those green bars they had before!

I have been using this for a while , its the same tool that is provided within the adwords section of google. Can provide some interesting comparisons if you put in a competitors website and search then compare with your results. They will be using the same tool to sort their adwords key words.

If you're talking about this tool

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Then I an tell you it's been around for years and is based on keywords that adwords customers are bidding on, rather than terms actually searched for.

That is the same tool Northie, but instead of those lame green bars it used to have, it now has numbers in the approximate search volume column.

There is also a drop down box just above (and to the right) of the results.... you'll probably need to change that to 'exact'. The numbers are drastically different.

If anyone happens to own a top slot for some semi-popular terms, then it'd be nice to have some more information posted here on how close it is.

update - I just checked a couple minor ones for my primary site. Considering there are some google shopping results above my slot, I'd say the numbers are pretty darn close.

Yeah Google started showing them at the beginning of the week.... the numbers are reasonable and more than we had before... so woooo hooo