Market Samurai: Some Warnings About Data Interpretation

Updated August 26, 2009

I have now had a short time to play with Keyword Elite 2.  I am ready to declare a new champion.  As a dedicated affiliate of Keyword Elite for a long time, I must announce that the clear winner so far is...

MARKET SAMURAI.

As much as I would like to refer you to Keyword Elite 2 and pocket a nice commission, I just can't do it.  I have only grown more impressed by Market Samurai as I have compared the two side by side.  I have, therefore removed all direct links to Keyword Elite from this page, although I still leave a link to a review page that I have not altered yet!

I believe that Market Samurai is a fantastic tool!  I only find one major thing wrong with the tool, itself.  That is that it has no affiliate program, as of this writing.  :-)  (At the bottom of the page, I announce my future plans regarding Market Samurai once the free trial ends.)

However, I do find some problems with the ways in which people were instructed to use one statistic during the Thirty Day Challenge, 2009, plus one piece of data that was largely ignored by #30dc due to time constraints, but which could be misinterpretted.

Phrase to Broad Match Data:

We in the #30dc were instructed to discard keywords with a low relationship (below 15%) between broad match and phrase match for a particular long-tail keyword.  That is unfortunate, because those who followed that recommendation discarded some potentially very rewarding keywords. 

Often, simply rearranging the order of the words within the phrase would yield a high probability of a phrase match that would easily meet the other criteria.  A low ratio simply means that you need to experiment with variations of the arrangement of those words to drive more traffic.  I think Market Samurai provides this option.

This is not a knock on Market Samurai.  Quite the contrary.  I am delighted to see the PBR when it is low.  That often means that I will identify the correct order of the words that will generate an almost perfect PBR.

OCI:

This was not one of the #30dc criteria.  However, I do want to make sure that you do not place too much confidence in this:

The tool gathers data on Microsoft OCI.  This is a number that is supposed to measure whether people searching for that phrase have any commercial intention.  In other words, are they ready to buy.

There are two problems associated with placing too much stock in OCI.  First, this tool is still in development at Microsoft.  At this stage it is admitedly unreliable.

Second, it flies in the face of other techniques employed by the #30dc.  For example, we are encouraged to use social media, where people are notoriously unlikely to buy.  Yet we are taught to attract those people in order to develop a long term relationship.  They same can be said for keywords with a low OCI.  We should be developing a relationship with people who search for those terms, as they have already displayed an interest in the niche.

Thus, I am glad that Market Samurai includes OCI.  However you must balance the information you obtain from it with the knowledge that the data are far from reliable at this point.  Over time, OCI will become better and, thus, more important for marketers.  If an when that occurs, OCI will be one of our most important metrics.

The same (reporting OCI) is partly true of another, cheaper alternative for finding niches as well as the new version of Keyword Elite.

Market Samurai Is a Winner, But:

I'll return to my main point, despite my warnings, Market Samurai is a great tool to have in any Internet marketer's arsenal.  However, it should not be the only tool used for SEO or for Keyword research.  Indeed there are several other tools that are much more effective for some parts of the online business "formula." 

The new Keyword Elite 2, releasing in a matter of hours, is a competing product to watch.  The first version of Keyword Elite (read our review) had a far superior database compared to Market Samurai, and it finds many valuable keywords that Market Samurai misses.  I suspect that KE2 will be even better than the original.  Furthermore, it performs some functions that are beyond the power of Market Samurai.

Having said that, I definitely plan to have Market Samurai in my arsenal once the trial period has ended!!!  Despite Ed Dale's teaching us to put our faith in one tool, any good tool, I believe that checking across a couple platforms is better.  I'm happier about investing time and money into a niche that two tools confirm than relying solely on one.  (That should delight software developers!)

The keyword research functions of Market Samurai are free, but the real power of this software is in the analysis and other functions.  So, when I say I'm adding it to my arsenal, I mean the paid version!

You can read my reviews of SEO software and/or keyword software for further discussion.

Also, if you don't need all the bells and whistles of Market Samurai, there is a tool that is similar in several of the functions.  Micro Niche Finder performs they same keyword finding, market analysis and affiliate product finding functions as Market Samurai, but it does not perform the other functions.  It is considerably less expensive.  You can read my review of Micro Niche Finder.

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Our other pages directly pertaining to the Thirty Day Challenge:

• 30 Day Challenge Poll
• Thirty Day Challenge Review
• Another Niche Finder
• Reservations About Traffic-Bug