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Google has added a wonderful new feature to its free Keyword
Tool and now shows real search numbers instead of a little bar
graph.

You can type in a word or phrase and see how many people
searched for it at Google the previous month and also see
average monthly searches.

This is a timely replacement for Yahoo’s keyword tool -
inventory.overture.com - which was unreliable and has
apparently disappeared for good.

The improved Google Keyword Tool is now much more useful
for basic keyword research for PPC campaigns, websites or
product research.

But before you try it - https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal -
  be warned. I’ve been playing around with it for a while, and noticed a couple of traps.

If you’re not careful, it’s easy to get search numbers that are obviously wrong - far too low or far too high.

For example, if you dive in and search for “2009 calendar” you
may think the average monthly search volume is 165,000 searches.
Or think it’s 14,800 for “seo book”.

However, that’s for the “Broad” search, which is the default. If you’re doing basic keyword research for website planning or article writing, that’s probably not the figure you need to look at.

There’s a little drop-down box you can use to refine your search and get different average monthly searches. For example…

2009 calendar - Broad - 165,000
2009 calendar - Phrase - 74,000
2009 calendar - Exact - 49,500
2009 calendar - Exact (Australia) - 49,500 (??? Can’t be right.)

seo book - Broad - 14,000
seo book - Phrase - 12,100
seo book - Exact - 6,600
seo book - Exact (Australia) 140

The Broad and Phrase options can include variations of your phrase. (Click on the question marks inside the tool and follow the links for detailed explanations.)

Where you live can alter your search results. I’m in Australia, and so Google “helps” me by tailoring my Keyword Tool searches for Australia. You can click on a link and tailor results for different parts of the planet or choose “All Countries and Territories”.

Also, Google says if you access the Keyword Tool from within an AdWords ad group, the search traffic statistics will factor in your campaign’s country and language targeting (if you target a region or city, only the country will be reflected).

As you can see from the results I received for my “2009 calendar” searches, the Australian result doesn’t make sense. The International and Australian results ought to be hugely different. Instead they’re exactly the same.

This odd result is a handy reminder that when you’re using keyword research tools don’t automatically accept the numbers. You need to add a hefty dollop of commonsense.

I did the same search three times and received the same odd result each time. I returned an hour later and still received a wonky result.

Google’s Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

How to use the Google Keyword Tool
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=25918

Info about Keyword Tool’s search volume statistics
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=96571&hl=en_US

Here’s another little oddity… 45.5 million people a month
search for “google” (exact match) and 45.5 million search for
“yahoo”.

This just spotted on Google’s External Keyword Tool as follows:

:

Holy cow — can you see it?

Now — rather than the old view which showed those green bar graphs under ALL THREE columns, shockingly, there are actual search count figures for specific keywords.Like say, for instance, I look above at the screenshot and I can see that 9,900 people are searching for “blogging software” in June with an ongoing average of 12,100. And interestingly, there are 135,000 people looking for a “radio blog” with an ongoing average of 110,000.

By Google’s own definition, the “Previous Month’s Search Volume” column “shows the previous month’s search volume on Google for each keyword, specific to your targeted country and language.

” The “Avg. Search Volume” column “shows the average monthly search volume on Google for each keyword over a recent 12-month period, specific to your targeted country and language.

” The shaded bar to the left remains unchanged as before which shows general low-to-high volume of how competitive ad placement is for a particular keyword.”

Now this is real hard core data versus those bar graphs they used to show.

Can someone say that there is actually some clarity on the demand of what is going on over at Google.com (half the world)??? 

This is right straight from the source.

My natural curiosity right away is to go and compare figures with my search logs and other places.

(Guaranteed to Come in Handy Sooner or Later.)

YuuGuu.com is a screen sharing service that allows anyone anywhere to view your screen and share control of your computer, using a web only app.

Glance.net is another desktop sharing utility, for web demos, presentations and webinars.

GetHuman.com is a listing of over 500 companies with instructions on how to bypass their automation systems (phone hell) and get to a human operator using their customer service numbers.

SocialMarker.com is a social bookmarking tool for Wordpress and regular web pages, that allows you to submit more easily to several popular bookmarking services, by pre-populating the submission form with selected information.

SocialPoster.com is a multi bookmark posting service that allows one-click submissions to social bookmarking services and community websites.

OnlyWire.com is a popular multi posting service for social bookmarking sites. Social news sites are - wisely - not included in the automated submissions.

Twitter.com which most people have heard about, is a useful micro blogging utility, which is handy if you need to “talk at” a number of people, with the same message, all at the same time.

PleasantSoftware.com has Ubercaster, which looks like a viable alternative to Apple’s Garageband for assembling podcasts.

Click2Sell.eu is an alternative to Clickbank and Paydotcom, offering services for both advertisers and publishers.

FindNot.com is a proxy service for anonymous surfing and private IP addresses. Handy if you do a lot of social posting using pen names.

SpyFU.com is a market research tool for PPC, that shows how much your competitors are spending per day, the number of clicks they get, position of their ads, and average cost per click.

Libsyn.com offers unlimited bandwidth for your multimedia files. You only pay a small fee for storage, and can show your movies as often as
they get clicked, without worrying about gigabytes transfered or bandwidth considerations.

Apple.com/itunes/tutorials/#podcasts shows how to subscribe to podcasts, get them organized, and sync them with your iPod using iTunes.

TubeTape.com offers affordable green screens for chroma key video effects, plus backdrops, stands and editing software.

YouTube.com/video_toolbox is YouTube’s very own video school, which will help your videos tell a compelling story and look their best online.

Apple.com/quicktime/pro/ is a audio video recorder and converter for Mac and Windows. After producing your media file, import it into QuickTime Pro and choose “export to ipod.” The result is a perfectly
compressed video that will play on all video iPods, iPhones, iTunes, Apple TVs and ALL MPEG-4 compatible media players.