Is Google Keyword Tool’s Data Insufficient?
August 5, 2008 by Jon
Filed under Search Engine Optimization
I was trying to do some keyword research last night, and noticed some strange behavior from the Google Keyword Tool. The tool would work for awhile, then suddenly all keywords would return INSUFFICIENT DATA for all of the fields. I’m talking all keywords, even ones that we know have data like “hdtv” and “ipod.” It did this whether I was using the tool anonymously or logged into my Adwords account.
I chalked it up to temporary problems and moved on to other tasks.
Tonight I tried to resume my keyword research. Everything was working fine at first, then the Google Keyword Tool began displaying INSUFFICIENT DATA for all of the keywords again. I was using FireFox for my research, so I jumped over to Internet Explorer to try it there. It worked for a little bit, and then started to have the same problem.
I jumped back over to FireFox and cleared both my cache and my cookies. I closed and relaunched the browser, and the tool started working for awhile. Eventually it started failing again.
Wondering if it was just me, I performed a Google Blog search for “insufficient data google keyword tool” and discovered that other people have been experiencing the same problem for a few days now.
So if you are having similar problems with the Google Keyword Tool, please know that you’re not alone. You can try changing to a new browser or clearing your cookies/cache, as that temporarily fixed the problem for me. But I can’t get it to work consistently throughout the evening. Let’s hope Google fixes this issue soon! 
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Using the keyword tool in our AdWords account gave us the same problem. We pulled data at the end of July of actual search numbers from this tool. Now it is not working. Tested “credit cards” and returned “insufficient data”. Surely there is enough data. Maybe they realized that this was providing too much data.
But I still copied data from our previous analysis.
Same here Jon, really annoying as it appears exactly when you need it *gg* I guess its called Murphy.
Read Manuel Merz’s last blog post: Smart Objekte in Photoshop
I haven’t had an issue yet, but I will be on the lookout. I am used to this type of thing for long tail keywords, but for “hdtv” that’s amazing. Maybe the data on really popular searches is so huge that an accurate number is impossible. But who knows.
Read Stephan Miller’s last blog post: Jason Moffet’s Niche Browser