Google Keyword Planner: A New Hope? Naaahhh!

Try to go to the Google Keyword Tool and you will be redirected to the support page with the title, “Keyword Planner has replaced Keyword Tool.”

It was in May that Google had announced that its traffic estimator and the keyword tool will be combined into one single environment called the Keyword Planner. This came in response to the feedback of a number of users, who had to say that using two tools to get traffic estimates, identify new keywords and ad groups, and choose competitive budgets and bids, was getting a bit time-consuming and making the whole process clumsy.

According to AdWords Product Manager, Deepti Bhatnagar, they were constantly striving to simplify the campaign building process and are quite happy to launch the Keyword Planner which merges the utility of the Google Keyword Tool and the Traffic Estimator. She added that the newly launched tool could be used to find new keywords and ad group ideas, to find the budget that is right for you and to get performance estimates.

Looking at the Twitter sentiments, it doesn’t seem that the Keyword Planner has been received with a thumbs up. Here are the drawbacks:

* In contrast to the keyword tool, users are required to log in to an AdWords account to access the planner.

* The planner doesn’t have match type data for search volume

* The filtering option of “closely related” search terms has completely vanished

* There is no option for device targeting

* No Global vs. Local monthly searches

The flip side is that it has its own positive traits as well:

* The keyword planner allows local SEM and SEO professionals to get more geographic segmentation and the ability to bundle geographic regions.

* Users now will be able to upload keywords up to 10,000 belonging to their own list to get performance data.

* Keyword planner will show search volumes from landing page, ad group or any other category set by the user.

However, there is still a dispute over the difference in search volume data between the two tools, with the elimination of two key sources, match types and device types. This is explained by Google as below:

“In general, you’ll notice that the average search volume data is higher in Keyword Planner as compared to the exact match search volume data you got with Keyword Tool. That’s because we’ll show you the average number of searches for a keyword idea on all devices (desktop and laptop computers, tablets, and mobile phones). With Keyword Tool, we showed you the average search volume for desktop and laptop computers by default.”

You would be able to measure conversions from all accounts with just one tag if you have multiple AdWords accounts. Also, in your My Client centre, you could use a cross-account search funnel to get a better handle on your clients’ conversion path across all the keywords in various accounts. The search funnels report includes the Overview report, the Assisted Conversions report, and the Top Conversions path report.

For organic results, Google is just moving far away from keyword dependence for the results returned.

Well, it has happened and it is official. It’s time to gear up and start adapting to the new tool or move on to other keyword research tools.