An astute reader emailed me (Preston, you're a genius) to suggest that rather than attempt to collect PPC stats on our own, why not tap into the vast resource of the Internet marketing community - surely, together, we will be far stronger than we would be as just one firm.

Here's the goal - to find a formula whereby we can measure the efficacy and accuracy of keyword research sources like Overture, KeywordDiscovery, Hitwise's Keyword Intelligence, Google's Adwords Estimator, MSN's Adcenter, and others. There's just a few simple steps to follow:

1. Gather a large list of hundreds, hopefully thousands of keyword terms and their actual search numbers at Google - this can be done by getting data from advertisers who were always listed on the 1st page of results for the term through AdWords (using the impression numbers for "exact match").
2. Gather a list of the estimated numbers reported by all of the major keyword research services for those same terms and phrases.
3. Distill the data, tossing out those phrases that might cause issue or those reports that wouldn't have a huge impact and keep only the best, most useful ones.
4. Compare the two sources (Adwords Impressions and estimator tools) and find out fascinating information like - which tool is most accurate? Is there a formula we could create that would predict (based on all the estimation sources) within 10%, 20% or 30% of actual traffic?

To my mind, this formula would be priceless to search marketers. Once you can accurately predict search traffic (even if it's off by 20-30%), you've got a system that doesn't require a massive spend at Google to predict actual searches. Even if the data isn't conclusive, the results will be incredibly enlightening.

We have a few clients (and some botched test data) that we can provide for the project, but we really need your help to make it possible. My promise is that we'll collect the data, report it all honestly (but anonymously - not revealing any of your keywords or those of clients) and build a tool that will use this formula. We'll also provide the exact formula publicly, so that anyone can use the same information to build their own tools, use it in their internal calculations, etc.

How can you help?

1. If you are willing to participate, please email [email protected]. We'll figure out all the necessary details, whittle down what's required, and request screenshots to help make the data collection happen.
2. If you are a PPC expert and can help us to analyze the data and issue the requirements, please email Rebecca as well; we'll need some help from the best :)
3. If you're a blogger, you could ask your readers to do likewise (you don't need to link here, you can just ask them to email Rebecca; I don't want it to look like I'm begging for link love)
4. If you participate at forums like DigitalPoint, Sitepoint, WebProWorld, SearchEngineWatch, HighRankings, etc. you could post about this and ask for volunteers (again, no need to link).
5. If you work for Google, you could just make the AdWords estimator accurate and save all the trouble (we'll even send you a lovely present).

What do you say? I think that together, we could make something that will be truly valuable for years to come (and, as the data becomes less accurate, we can refresh it).

Am I off my rocker here, or is this an idea that has some merit? Any suggestions, additional ideas, important points to consider?

p.s. Rebecca - I'm sorry to flood your inbox like this