[freelistfool]

From my experience it appears that the google adwords keyword tool is cumulative. For example I rank #1 for a keyword (let's call it "widgets") that has 820,000 google hits a month and I only get 1200 hits from it. However, I rank #3 for a more specific keyword (like "purple fuzzy widgets") where google's adwords tool says it get 260 hits a month. I get 150 hits a month from it.

So the long tail stats are pretty accurate, but the more generic terms add in all the long tail terms. You can download the keywords with their number of hits into a spreadsheet then add up the long tail keywords and subtract that number from the generic term to get a better picture for generic term's google hits.