A friend of mine and fellow PPC analyst asked me if I had noticed any difference in the performance of my PPC search volumes in the last few months. While things seemed to be normal on the results end, they were significantly off my projections, in the bad way.

For those of you that do not follow such nerd-dom, it is worth restating that  in mid September Google changed the way the Adwords Keyword Tool compiled data. Simply put, the end result of your PPC campaigns did not change, but the estimate of the data from the Keyword Tool will now be significantly reduced. This is because the search volume estimate is  now coming from google.com results only, not the included partners like ask.com and aol.com.

This is significant because certain people use certain search engines. I have noticed for  years that Yahoo is used by older generations and depending on your keywords, and ad copy, your click through rate will show that.

It is always important to get a second opinion with other tools like wordtracker and using your own analytics. At the least, update your projections based on the new data.