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Breaking news on SEW is that Google made a change to the tool last week to combine search variants.Articles belowInstead of showing individual keyword estimates per KW or KW phrase, it now lumps in the data together which means that it will show identical estimates for both both. It's no longer possible to see individual estimates to check highest/lowest volumes anymore. All the data has been changed retrospectively alsohttp://www.thesempost.com/googles-keyword-planner-now-combines-keywords-for-search-volume/https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/06/29/googles-keyword-planner-tool-just-became-even-more-inaccurate/Adwords Keyword Planner now seems to combine many search variants, including:

• plurals with non-plurals for any word in the keyword phrase
• acronyms with longhand version e.g. SEO + search engine optimiZation + search engine optimiSation
• stemming variants: -er, -ing, -ized, -ed etc keywords (ie. designer, designing, designed)
• words that can be spelled with or without space (ie. car park and carpark)
• words with and without punctuation (ie. kid toys and kid’s toys)

Thanks E_F. I've not heard anything back from Adwords support in Europe yet.

Wouldn't it be great if Google would also explain why they changed the methodology as the tool is no longer fit for the purpose it was originally designed for?:-)

Hi there

I'm seeing crazy inflated keyword volumes from Adwords KW Planner too. I keep a record of the extracts for these 300 KWs so have files going back to Sept-15

Not the same issue as with plural/singular highlighted by the other but...

1. an inflated "Avg. Monthly Searches (exact match only)" number in June versus all other previous months by 6x in some cases e.g. avg monthly searches for a particular KW was 2,400 up to April and now it's gone to 14,800.

2. And also, Google have also retrospectively updated each of the 12 previous months average search query volumes by keyword.

Here's an example attached. Hope you can read it

Out of the ~300 KWs I track, 40 keywords have 2x'd and higher their average monthly keyword volume. 81 KWs have increased average monthly search volumes by 50%

To me it looks like either it's either a bug (or new method) in how Google count average monthly searches or they haven't updated their KW volumes in this tool in the last 12 months.

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