Adsense keyword tool - "Not enough data"

[sigurd]

I'v spent a lot of quality time with the Adsense Keyword tool, but there are one thing that I really don't get.

I often come across phrases, where there the "approx av. search volume" is in the thousands, but there apparently aren't enough data to show anything for the last month:




So, what does it mean? How can there not be enough data to show something for October, when the average is in the thousands?
I remember seeing phrases, where the data from the previous months were in double digits, and this really confuses me

[PokerproEU]

When the average is in the thousands it can be a temporary problem so you could try again later. If a keyword is very uncommon, such as four word long tails, there may not be enough information about it. However, I have seen some keywords month after month showing 'not enough data' when the average (four figures) stays the same. In this case I think that Google is constantly unable to retrieve enough information about that keyword to show the approximate number of search queries. If the 12-month average stays the same or slightly fluctuates there is nothing wrong with that particular keyword.

[kingcobra]

I've seen this as well and the best advice is not to pay attention to the previous month and go with the average. I've found the numbers to be unreliable as well. For instance there's no way that poker tip got 40K searches in Nov and poker tips which is a lot bigger term generally only got 27K. Although I don't optimize for poker tip I'm on page 1 for it and I can tell you there's not a lot of action for this term. It's not even worth bothering with really.

Speaking of this tool, there's a lot of weird strings that it says gets quite a few searches but intuitively we'd think otherwise and we'd be absolutely correct. For instance poker tips hold and poker tips texas hold both show 4400 a month. I'm on page 1 for both of them by coincidence I might add and don't think I've ever got any searches from either of them. I get a lot more traffic from more thinly searched terms (under 1k a month) with page 1 rankings like free poker instruction and the like. The bottom line is that you got to use your head with these as well. I pay more attention to what people are coming to my site from than this stuff.

Ken
http://kingcobrapoker.com