Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery - How do they compare?

by John Alexander

 

I have often been asked by readers for more in-depth information on what I think of Keyword Discovery compared to Wordtracker. As you know, I have mainly focused on sharing my expertise in Keyword Forensics and have written two e-books on how to make the best use of Wordtracker for researching behaviors. One of the reasons I have not talked more about Keyword Discovery is because it is a rather completely different system, with different KEI values and frankly, I have not wanted to mix the two. But in fairness to our readers, I think it is an honest question and it deserves to be addressed.

No tool is perfect. While I have personally leaned on Wordtracker for years from the beginning because of it's behavioral research aspects, each keyword research tool has it's own strengths. As a starting point, before I get into any further in depth on any teaching, I think the best thing to do is give you some strengths and weaknesses of both and that will help you make your own informed decisions.  

Here is a simple matrix that identifies the strengths of each program. This is based on my own personal experience and primarily where search engine optimization is involved. 

Here are a few points head to head:

Wordtracker.com	KeywordDiscovery.com	Which Has The Clear Advantage?
Keyword Forensics WT has the ability to tap into hidden evidence of user search to find the phrases that "tell a story." Fascinating and very powerful way to quickly mine great data.	Keyword Forensics KD does not have the same advantage with respect to this type of research. You can find great data, but not the same behaviorally related detail that without doing some digging.	Wordtracker Excellence!  (a huge value to me over the years in getting great results fast)
KEI effectiveness Keyword effectiveness index indicates the probable effectiveness of a phrase based on a unit of measurement. Higher the number the better.	KEI effectiveness Keyword effectiveness index in KD works fine as well but is based on a completely different scale of 1 to 10. Don't confuse the two.	Equal
Reports for Purchase Wordtracker sells a variety of other reports starting from 10,000 keywords for $69.00 to a report of the top 20 million most searched phrases for about $54,000US.  Wordtracker offers reports in quantities of: 10,000 20,000 100,000 500,000 1 million, 5 million  and 20 million in size.	Reports for Purchase Keyword Discovery also offers Top Keyword Search Term reports of 10,000 for $99.95 which is a little more money. But the benefit you have with Keyword Discovery is that you can also order  their Top term reports based on:  Historical data News data Premium data E-bay data or based on shopping data Keyword Discovery also will sell you very focused lists that they call "Exhaustive Lists of keywords."	Keyword Discovery I have to hand it to keyword discovery here. for excellent reports!
Projects Wordtracker allows you to create unlimited Projects can be copied, deleted, renamed, added to, deleted from and exported.	Projects Keyword Discovery search results can be organized and saved into projects. Projects can be copied, deleted, renamed, added to, deleted from and exported.	About Equal
Historical Research Data Not yet	Historical Research Data Yes	Keyword Discovery wins here
Languages Available English US data English UK data	Languages Available English plus Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and several other languages.	Keyword Discovery Excellence!
Database Size Wordtracker has a database of approximately 300 to 350 million queries within the last 100 days. Wordtracker Data comes from the Metacrawlers.	Database Size Keyword Discovery collects search term data from close to different 200 search engines world wide. Their historical global Keyword database contains over 36 billion searches.	Keyword Discovery Excellence! More data is not always better, but this is impressive.
Other Data Wordtracker has the short term top 1000 report showing top words within the last 24 hours. The long term Top 1000 report shows data from the last 90 days approximately.	Other Data Keyword Discovery also has the advantages of the news database which contains searches performed at major news sites and news portals. Great research for SEO involving PR. Historical data, E-bay data and shopping data are all available.	Keyword Discovery Excellence!
Related Keywords Wordtracker's Full Search feature provides a collection of popular related search terms for any keyword, helping you find semantically related terms.	Related Keywords Keyword Discovery has a related search feature provides a collection of popular related search terms for any keyword, helping you broaden your keyword range.	About Equal
Seasonally Related Data Not yet	Seasonally Related Data Keyword Discovery search data can be displayed in a graphical format to help identify seasonal search trends over the previous 12 months.	Keyword Discovery Excellence!
Industry Keywords Tool Nothing comparable yet	Industry Keywords Industry Keywords is a tool that tracks the most popular search terms that drive actual traffic to sites in any selected industry. This data enables you to compare the keywords you are currently getting traffic for, with that of your industry competitors.	Keyword Discovery highly satisfactory

The above table highlights only some of the differences between the two research tools Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery and is hardly meant to be an exhaustive list of comparisons. To see a full feature list of all features in Keyword Discovery, please check out their page of 28 different Keyword Discovery features here.

You can sign up for a free trial at Wordtracker here.

You can sign up for a free trial at Keyword Discovery here.

While I have written multiple articles on how to use Wordtracker effectively, you need to be aware of some of the powerful features that Keyword Discovery offers too. The purpose of this article is not to say one is better than the other. But depending on your specific needs, you should be aware of all of the available options there are out there and choose what works best for you. I highly recommend both of these tools and services to all SEO professionals and Webmasters who want access to great data. I will share more information on these subjects in the future.

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John Alexander is Director of Search Engine Academy with SEO training centers located across North America and Asia. Together with his partner Robin Nobles, John is also Co-Director of Training for Search Engine Workshops. Together John and Robin teach stress free formulas for obtaining top visibility on major search engines to workshop students from all around the world since 2002. John and Robin also operate an online community for professional search engine marketers called the SEO Workshop Resource Center. John is the author of the Wordtracker Magic E-books Volumes 1 and 2. Grab a free SEO Tip of the Day -  It's Free!  

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