Posts Tagged ‘Google Tools’

For those of us who have been in search marketing for a few years we all have fond memories of the Overture (now known as Yahoo) Traffic/Inventory Estimating tool. I know I personally utilized this tool to gain insight into the search inventory available and make best guesses on how much traffic I would be able to drive for my former employers as well as for my clients. This tool was useful to see what type of keywords people would search on and it would be roughly applicable to all engines whether it was Google, Yahoo, MSN, or ASK.  Then.. Yahoo killed the links to this tool. For the more savvy veterans, we found roundabout ways to access this tool. We managed to do this for a few months until Yahoo finally killed it completely. All was lost. There were weeks of mourning. Meanwhile other 3rd party tools rejoiced as their products became suddenly more valuable. Google on the other hand, surprisingly never showed us search volume. Google would only provide us little bars that would signify the level of traffic but whether that meant 1000 clicks or 10,000 clicks or 1,000,000 million clicks,  who knew? However today they’ve added search volume data to their Keyword Tool. Listening to advertiser feedback, they are now showing approximate search volume for the previous month as well as the approximate average search volume a month. I wish I could provide a link to the tool, but it will require you to log into your adwords account. If you are not familiar with the tool here is how you get to it.

1. Sign into your Adwords Account.
2. Choose Campaign & Adgroup. (if you aren’t looking to modify a specific adgroup, just click TOOLS from the top nav and navigate directly.
3. Choose the Keyword Tab.
4. Click on Keyword Tool.For further information of how to use the tool directly visit the Help Center Here.  

As you utilize this tool, please be aware that these tools generally inflate the search volume available. If I owned a search engine I would do the same. Who wouldn’t want to bid on more keywords if there is so much opportunity to be had! But remember, just because you see 100,000 click volume available, it does not mean you would be able capture 100,000 clicks. You are competing against a lot of competitors both national and local who are also making an effort to capture as much volume as they can handle. Also how you structure your account, what type of match type you use, how often you optimize, how you develop and test your creative, how you modify and test your landingpages, how much good quality score history you can build and maintain, all have an effect on whether or not you will be able to compete against the 10s if not 100s of competitors in your industry.

Paul Lee
Sr. Manager of Web Marketing
LeadQual - SEM