SEM savant Marty Weintraub has an excellent post on the dumbing down of the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Google owns the largest first-hand sampling of query data in many parts of the world. Now, breaking rank with 15+ years of holistic search engine open-source tradition, Google has decided marketers should no longer have easy access to the long, or even mid tail data (search inventory), unless the keyword has demonstrated “commercial” characteristics historically. Effectively, in tandem with the well-established user-herding “suggest” feature, this move consolidates Google’s semantic semi-monopoly into fewer keyword SKUs…

The revolution of search has traditionally been centered on our ability to discover how humans search, the words they use, in what order, the frequency thereof and other subtle semantic permutations. Unless we want to subscribe (in resignation) to Google’s dumb-ass shortening of the known language universe, this tool borders on useless. No more will Google’s sampling of human queries be easily available just for the asking.

As Marty points out in his post, this move provides a lot of opportunity to other keyword research tools, particularly Bing’s.


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7 Response Comments

  • Darren Shaw  October 8, 2010 at 10:43 pm

    Hopefully a 302! Google, please bring back the old keyword tool!

  • Jim Rudnick  October 9, 2010 at 5:19 am

    it’s long gone, I’m afraid….

    and my research will now tend to go to Wordtracker……

    er…hey Majestic, you guys thinking here that there may now be a “hole” in the marketplace that your own index might fill…

    sure would be good for us SEO practitioners, eh!

    🙂

    Jim

  • Mike Stewart  October 9, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    Dixon Jones to the rescue! lol.

  • Orlando SEO  October 9, 2010 at 8:32 pm

    I was using adwords as a tool to estimate local search volume for keywords like [city keyword] as the big G’s keyword tool flat would not give me any clue as to my related local search volume. Then a few weeks ago I started getting this “low search volume” message. Basically G was telling me that my keywords did not have enough commercial value for them to even show my freekin ad? I know there is volume as my clients are getting monthly counts in the hundreds. Ever received the copyright issues message? What if my client sells or fixes Ford? So I cant use that as my keyword?

  • Sherwin  October 11, 2010 at 7:52 am

    Interesting post! Indeed the Google keyword tool has been a very important tool in search engine optimization nowadays. I still use it more than market samurai.

  • SEO Bob  October 13, 2010 at 11:01 am

    The old keyword tool worked so well for us. It’s sad that it’s gone. SO we are left with wordtracker which I never much liked but any port in a storm, right?

  • Magnetic Web Design  October 19, 2010 at 7:59 am

    I can only add to what everyone else has already said, but I wonder if anyone has any other free alternatives they use beyond wordtracker?

    Thanks!