What is search volume?
Several years ago a hidden API (an API is a way for applications to send and receive data) was discovered on the Amazon site.
When a keyword was passed to this API it returned some numbers that were considered to be the number of times that keyword was searched on Amazon.
At the time this was incredibly useful as it was a great way to know which keywords had the most demand.
In December 2018 this API was closed and it was no longer possible to get the data.
Since then a lot of apps still use estimated search volume as the main metric for gauging the demand of a keyword.
The issues with estimated search volume
1) It's an estimate
The search volumes are estimates as it is no longer possible to get this data from Amazon.
To calculate this value now most apps use one of a few methods. They use the old values for keywords and add a percentage on, they use data from Google about searches they have for the same keywords, they take the Search Frequency Rank values from Amazon Brand Analytics reports and assigning them a 'search volume' or by using some other method.
None of these methods produce accurate values.
2) Number of searches doesn't always correlate to the number of sales
If a keyword is shown to have a large number of searches it cannot be assumed that the keyword has a large number of sales.
An example of this is shown below.
Why knowing the sales made after a keyword is searched is the best metric
When it comes to information around keywords used by shoppers on Amazon then in the absence of other information search volume is useful. More useful is knowing the actual clicks shoppers make after searching for a keyword, and the most useful metric is knowing how many sales were made by shoppers after searching for a keyword.
Example 1
When doing research for new product ideas you might come across a keyword that has gone from having very few searches to having a huge number.
In this example, the keyword is gaming apparel.
Other apps may show that the search volume has gone from practically zero to over 360,000 searches in one week!
This looks like a great opportunity to catch a trend that is blowing up so you frantically source some clothes that appeal to gamers and launch your product on Amazon.... and you get no sales.
The reason - although the searches made for the keyword may have increased dramatically the sales haven't.
A search for gaming apparel on Datarova for the end of May onwards shows that although clicks are reaching around 15k per week, sales haven't exceeded 30 per week!
For those 12 weeks, the average clicks made on products after gaming apparel was searched were 10,982 but the average sales made per week were 18. This means a 0.2% conversion rate.
Example 2
You sell a dog leash and want to know which keywords you should target.
You come across two relevant keywords with very similar search volumes.
One of the keywords is dog collars, harnesses & leashes and the other is retractable dog leash.
The search volume for dog collars, harnesses & leashes for the last 30 days is steady at slightly over 80,000.
The search volume for retractable dog leash for the last 30 days is also steady at slightly over 80,000.
From this, you would assume both of these keywords are of equal importance but this is not the case.
For the same date range Datarova shows you that dog collars, harnesses & leashes had an average of 3,150 clicks and 325 sales per week for a 10.3% conversion rate.
But, retractable dog leash had an average of 7,858 clicks and 2,166 sales per week with an average conversion rate of 27.6% for the same 4 weeks.
Although the search volume shown in other apps suggested these keywords were of equal importance this is clearly not the case as one gets 2.5x the clicks as the other and over 6.5x as many sales!