I don’t usually review tools, but Google have just released their new search based keywords tool. Now you can make sure you don’t miss any of those additional keywords you maybe meant to include, but didn’t buy.

The cynics might think extra keywords = extra revenue, if everyone has the keywords = more competitive bidding = higher cost per click and more profits to the big G. Google also gives the disclaimer that using the tool will not necessarily improve your campaign performance. But this tool is a help to those consulting and doing keyword research. At a glance you can see the keywords, suggested bids, search volumes and other information, as well as being able to sort by field for the website or an entire category.

You can also create a search on the term and view the search term with Google Insights to get additional information.

Putting the new search based keyword tool to the test:

Using Belldirect, a newish share trading entrant to Australia with a clean website. Share trading and online share trading is the key search term for sites like these.

The tool produced a list of 190 keywords with search volumes of 25 to 23,000 for the term “share trading” and split these between those relevant to your site and then keywords related to your search term. First thing to notice is the Google AdWords tool gives the search volume on “phrase match” at 27,100 for October and 18,100 average and 130 closely related and 70 broadly related terms. That’s a difference in excess of 20% both ways on search volumes. The outcome was similar for other popular sites and keywords. Google does however say the data is updated every couple of weeks, so no doubt this is due to timing differences in the cut off of the data and also to keep webmasters guessing as to search volumes.

But, the real value is this tool telling what keywords your Adwords campaigns is missing, so no opportunities are missed to appear for more keywords or pay Google more cash.

Questions for Google

  • Thanks Google for an extremely useful tool, but please tell us which search volume number more accurate
  • You get limited keyword ideas if your Adwords billing address is outside of the US or UK. Does this mean these countries are just too damm small or because its Beta, it’s not rolled out yet?
  • If you know where I live and give me local search volumes please can I have english UK and not english US spelling. Try using the term search engine optimisation and all the results are the US version optimization
  • If you are moving to behavioural search and local search, what is this based on, my behavior , general behaviour and how local is it?

Conclusion

  • Being fair, its new and still in Beta. Its useful, but use it in conjunction with what you have been using. It certainly has replaced our process and research, but it will definitely not be ignored as an additional source of wisdom from the Google fountain and as a quick lookup tool around kwywords
  • They went cheap on the user interface
  • I can see some headaches trying to reconcile search volume differences and explain these to clients
  • Smart move releasing this just before the holiday season