At SES last year, Yahoo! allowed all those that were not part of the Beta
team an opportunity to see the great and new Panama. (That was almost a year
ago and yet at the end of this month all Yahoo! advertisers will be
transitioned to the new platform – so much for the strong arm of
efficiency.)
I remember sitting in the crowded auditorium of the San Jose Center,
listening to the Panama team announce the advantages of assists, and A/B
testing (though you have to have a Platinum level to be afforded this
luxury), while I choked down my free sandwich and Jones Cola – (others were
running back to the Convention floor, stuffing swag under there seats and
pretending nobody would notice them stealing 12 pens or Findology massager.)
The mass consensus was that Yahoo! had caught the Google bus, and was
jumping off the auction system to try and ride the coattails of its
Mountainview competitor. Hardly anybody was as aghast as I was that the one
proprietor of free search volume metrics was going to transition to a range
instead of quantifiable numbers instead. Then it happened, just before
Christmas the Yahoo! API stopped providing search volume on bulk lists (you
couldn’t even pretend to set-up an account to get the SV for 40 phrases and
cut & paste together a real Keyword Analysis anymore) – every keyword tool
was in shambles. Every SEO firm was looking for something to fill the gap,
me included.
Were did I go? Everywhere!
Now don’t get me wrong. You should be able to draw up a strong Keyword list
just from some analytics investigation, a thorough understanding of the
target market, and a firm comprehension of your website/product offering –
but everybody likes to be able to put numbers to their “gut” feelings.
But for those not willing to pay money for 3rd-party tools (tools built on a
now defunct API), where could they go… surely the Search Engines would
provide some numbers for advertisers to baseline on!
Google
Google has a
robust tool that allows you to display data by: search volume,
cost and position estimates, search volume trends, and possible negative
matches. However, Google doesn’t like to provide numbers, only ranges,
because as any free market theorist will tell you, “ranges promote higher
spending.” Google knows this, and Google makes a lot of money because they
know this – Yahoo! just learned.
Figure 1: Snapshot of Google's Keyword Tool Results
However, a range is relatively useless if you don’t know what the maximum
and minimum values are. Besides, what about seasonality?
Google Trends to the rescue… not really. Again, there are no numbers to
baseline anything, you can track some seasonality, but little else.
Figure 2: Snapshot of Google Trends
Yahoo!
Now a defunct API, Yahoo! has made announcements of a new keyword tool to be
released in this quarter, but I highly doubt they will return to providing
advertisers with actual search volume numbers – it just isn’t profitable in
the long run. In fact, Yahoo!! has even taken away its bid pricing tool,
although the API still works, but I can assure you that as the last client
is transitioned to Panama, the API will also stop providing advertisers with
bid prices.
In the meantime, you can still rely on the single keyword input that is the
old
Overture tool
– so long as your Keyword Analysis is less than 20 words;
else it may be a long night.
Figure 3: Snapshot of Overture Keyword Selector Tool
Microsoft
Last week, MSN adCenter released a
cool keyword forecasting tool
as an
extension of its growing
adCenter Labs. Only there is a real difference here
from the other Search Engine’s tools – real numbers.
Type in one or more keywords and you’ll get a breakdown as to the number of
searches over the past year, and the forecasted number of searches for the
next few months in MSN and based on MSN past searches. It’s a great way to
do more accurate projections on your traffic and sales volume for the near
future, but it also is dependent on a Search Engine data stream that only
has 10% of the market share. In that case, how accurate are the numbers –
honestly, not very when considering overall search volume of any one phrase,
but it may be better than anything else out there.
Figure 4: Snapshot of AdCenter Keyword Forecasting Tool
There are serious limitations; namely, 70 characters or 4 keywords – that’s
all you can query at any one time, but you do get a quick analysis of:
• Number of searched over the past year
• A forecast of number of searches in the coming months
• Keyword age distribution
• Keyword gender distribution
In addition, no MSN adCenter account is required to use the tool.
In a Nutshell
“You take the good, you take the bad…” and although it might not be a grown
up Tutti, these are the facts of life: the search engine’s are trying to
make money – hence, no more freebies, like search volume. MSN may be giving
it for a little time, but only because they are trying to net more and more
advertisers… hoping that market share will come in tow like a hungry toy
poodle (too bad it isn’t). And even though the tools are no longer complete,
they are a pretty good second for understanding your market, product, and
channel – and honestly, almost as good as any 3rd party solution, but that
is another article. |
enquiro research
Rick
Tobin