Google return stats mean nothing to people like me who actually buy and sell valuable domains all day long. If you're talking about Google popularity stats that their business arm spits back in order to calculate what your traffic buy is, well, that's one indicator, but when people say "My domain tigertail.com brings up 22,000 returns on Google", I must laugh. This is the most imprecise measure that only amateurs use.
As for Overture, its shortcomings are legendary, including recent stuff about people cramming a search term to spike results on the next month's numbers (predictable), but when I sell an expensive name, the first commonly agreed upon independent measure of value (after site stats) is Overture. It's certainly just a finger in the air, but a good one.
For example, a recent sale at $10k was predicated on 1200 actual key-ins per day, and Overture numbers of 30,000 a month. This ended up being a steal for the buyer, primarily because key-ins were so much higher relative to Overture numbers. The owner was setting his price relative to Overture rather than key-ins..
You see? So there's all kinds of anomolies, but ultimately, you don't get past the $10k mark on a domain (unless it's a brand or generic name of incredible simplicity) without good Goto numbers.
But Google returns? Not meaningless, but close to it.
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