The root problem with Market Samurai isn’t because the users are ineffective in their use of the software . As a developer, if the users of an application cannot use your application properly, then it is a design fault. The developer has made it too complicated for the user.

these are the independent videos by the 30 DC TEAM they fully cover the practical
application of the M/S TOOL..which in the end is to find a niche to target which has a strong probability of us getting to the first page and then to the top…most of the people get stuck on doing far too much analysis with out thinking of the end in mind first..that is the SEO Competition module WHICH TELLS US can we compete with the existing web pages ..this to my mind has been the big failing of many of the users of M/S..THAT I HAVE SEEN ON THE FORUM…the product is great but the users are very weak in their understanding of this tool.this is where Vincent and Brent miss the point ,and brent is one of the developers.

There is a Google AdWords Keyword Tool here:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

The Google AdWords API retrieves similar data to this form. If this isn’t accurate, I don’t know what is.

Thanks for the honest review of Market Samurai.

I think one of the problems that we have with Market Samurai is something that you pointed out – a knowledge gap problem.

Because Market Samurai is so different to anything else that’s on the market right now when it comes to keywords, I notice that when people do have difficulty with Market Samurai, it’s usually because we haven’t trained them well enough in how the software works, why it works that way, and how to use it to your advantage.

So I agree with you when you talk about the difficulties understanding some of the jargon. It does take time to learn how to use Market Samurai effectively.

You raise a lot of questions in your blog post – so let me help you by answering them.

You mentioned the phrase-to-broad match (PBR) and that you weren’t sure how we decided it was a good indicator.

We came up with PBR because it solved a problem with Broad Match keyword data.

Long story short, when people used Broad Match data, they would often find their keywords were in an odd order.

This was because broad match doesn’t take into account precise word orders of keywords (like Phrase Match does). So a keyword like “Samurai Review Market” and “Market Samurai Review” (to use this blog post as an example) would have the same traffic when looking at the broad match data.

But if you’re using the keyword “Market Samurai Review” – you want to get an insight into slight variations of that keyword (“review market samurai”, “review of market samurai”, “market samurai software review” etc).

Broad match data will tell you this.

So to get the value of broad match keyword data, AND to select the best possible word order, we did a simple ratio between the two – and it worked a charm!

People started getting their keywords in better word orders, and picking up far more traffic.

You mentioned that we use Google’s “Advertiser Competition” field.

I agree completely – this data that Google provides sucks. Even Google’s own information in this is vague, and it makes it difficult to use effectively.

But stay tuned over the next few weeks – we’re replacing it very soon with something much better (that piece of information is an exclusive for your blog )

Finally – you mentioned API’s.

Unfortunately, the APIs that are available right now simply don’t provide accurate data.

The limit of 150 keywords can be a little restricting – so we’re looking at solutions to this at the moment.

Thanks for the review and the feedback.

Obviously we keep an eye on what people are saying about Market Samurai, and use the good and bad to improve the software.

That’s part of the reason why there are so many updates – the other part is because we’re still in beta – and as you pointed out, there are still features we need to release.

Anyway – I hope this has been valuable.

Now that you have my email address, feel free to drop me a line.

Brent