Keyword Strategy Studio now supports creation of customized PDF reports that contain your company name, URL and watermark. You can distribute these reports to your clients.
This option is available to registered customers who have purchased IM Toolpad. More details are available.
We will be discontinuing some of our freeware products from August 1, 2008. These are mostly the products currently available at MyToolpad.Com. The site itself will mostly likely be pulled.
We have been providing a number of simple utility software tools since 1999. Most of these products are very simple to use and never required any support. However, the past few months have seen many emails claiming one or more of these tools have a Trojan/Worm/Virus in them.
None of these products are infected or malicious.
It is just that some of the new Anti-Virus / Anti-Malware tools make a lot of false alarms. Answering such emails have become a drain and is simply not worth the effort.
So I have decided to stop distributing and supporting these tools altogether.
Only the general purpose tools that have no connection to our commercial software products will be pulled.
It has been an interesting experience reading the reactions and comments about the changes at Google Keyword Tool.
Here are a couple of common questions and some comments…
Why is Google keyword volume count so different from the counts at some of the third party tools?
Of course it will be different. None of the third party tools ever had access to Google search database. The third party tools were based on data from some of the meta crawlers (a tiny percentage of the actual search volume) and local ISPs. Google is the most widely used search engine. Their data is much more likely to be relevant and useful.
Google says there are 1800 searches per month for this phrase. But I am ranked #1 for that phrase and I don’t see that many searches!
Any one who searched is not going to always click the top ranked result. That will depend on what shows up in the search result title, the displayed snippet, what the other results show, what the user is actually looking for and so on.
Also, the counts displayed on Google tool are based on a number of factors like the geographical location, the keyword match type (phrase, exact, broad), etc.
The Google results are inflated by a factor of "N"
Any analysis for checking the accuracy requires that you know exactly what percentage of users will click on the top ranked result. You can’t base such an analysis on one person checking his AdWord account for a few keywords and comparing the click throughs with the Google search volume counts.
Over time there will be a better understanding of how accurate the Google search counts are, but 1 or 2 days is certainly not enough to make an authoritative statement. There is no evidence at this point to prove that Google is inflating the results. As already pointed out, the search counts are based on factors like the user location, type of keyword match etc.
One of the most common problems on the Internet is the willingness of people to just cut and paste whatever they read into their own blogs and web pages. No one bothers to check if the information they are spreading is true or even reasonable. If a well known blogger posts an opinion you can expect to see the same repeated all over the net as a "fact"!
Finally Google has decided to show the search volumes in their keyword suggestion tool! Read the official announcement here.
This is really good news!
The data from Google is of course much more authentic as against the data provided by any third party tool that extrapolates data from smaller samples.
Related Links
Release candidate versions of Watch My Domains and Domain Punch Professional are available for download…
Click here For Watch My Domains Pro v3
Click here For Domain Punch Pro v2
Click Here For Watch My Domains ISP Demo v3
All the above products require Windows XP or Vista.
We hope to release these products this week.
Update (July-8-2008): Google Keyword Tool Updated To Show Search Volumes
This question pops up every time there is a discussion about keyword research. As always the answer is…
None!
It is not very difficult to see why.
There are hundreds of search engines and people from all over the world are doing searches all the time. There is no way some one can actually collect this data, create a database of search phrases and tabulate the number of times each keyword phrase was used.
Even if someone were to attempt this, where would they get the search data from?
Search volumes from search engines
Google will know for certain how many searches occur on Google for each keyword phrase. This will be significant given that Google is the most popular search engine. Unfortunately they don’t actually publish the search volume data. Recently Google Trends have been updated to show some numbers (if you are signed into your Google account). However it still doesn’t show the actual search volumes.
The Google keyword tool shows some information on relative search volumes as a small horizontal bar. Again, no actual values are provided (Update 8-july-2008: Google has started showing search volume counts).
You can create a Google AdWords account and bid for terms. Then check the number of impressions for each keyword phrase. This will give you some idea about the search counts.
Another solution is to approach a smaller meta search engine and make a deal with them to obtain the search volume data. This can be extrapolated to estimate global search volumes. However you really can’t consider this kind of data as highly accurate.
Search volumes through ISPs
ISPs handle a large amount of Internet traffic and they do keep a log of all URLs that are accessed. So they are in a position to see what searches take place. However, this information is mostly localized. You will need to collect data from multiple ISPs from all over the state / country / world and tabulate it. This is not an easy task because ISPs will not release this information due to privacy laws. Again, some smaller ISPs may provide this information to private parties.
Stop worrying about the search volume counts!
Wondering about the accuracy of search volume counts serves no real purpose. Search volumes vary from day to day. Some keywords are highly seasonal and some phrases spike because of a current event.
Keyword counts are also polluted by Internet marketers doing searches as part of their research.
A good article on your site can attract a large number of visitors with each one using a completely different keyword search phrase. We have had hundreds of visitors a day coming to pages on our site with not a single keyword phrase used twice!
Instead of going after a few high search volume keyword phrases, find the top keywords and keyword phrases that are important to your field / industry. You can use the Google keyword Tool or a software like Keyword Strategy Studio (part of IM Toolpad) to do this. Once you have a list of the important keywords use them in your web page copy (as titles, headings and as part of the page text).
Spend more time writing useful articles and blog posts for your visitors and customers or improve your existing web pages instead of obsessing about the keyword search volumes. This will automatically create a large number of search word combinations on your site. The traffic will follow soon.
We get about 3-4 emails a week from people who want to know how our software can help him or her make money.
Typically the person wants to know how he can make make $MMMM in the next ‘N’ days using our software…
Click Here To Make Money?
Unfortunately, our software products do not have a button called "click here to make money"!
The reason for these emails is not hard to find. The Internet is full of sites promising quick money for a few hours of work each week. Many of them sell the "simple N step formula" (or whatever) to make you rich beyond your dreams in a few days! All you need to do is buy the 78 page PDF ebook for $19.95!
Yes, it is possible to start and run a highly successful on-line business. But the sad truth is that majority of the people who try after reading these ebooks fail. This of course, makes it easy for the ebook sellers to sell even more PDF files!
If you want quick money right now…
On the other hand,
If you want to start an on-line business, do it for the long haul!
The Yahoo (previously Overture) search suggestion tool has been dead for quite some time. However, the URL remained alive. Finally it has been given a silent burial by Yahoo.
The link at http://inventory.overture.com/ now redirects to the Yahoo Small Business website.
The Overture based keyword suggestion tool in Good Keywords has not been working ever since the Overture tool went dead. Now that it is fully buried we will be updating Good Keywords and replacing the keyword suggestion tool in it with a basic version derived from our Keyword Strategy Studio.
Anyway, the Overture Suggestion Tool had lost most of it’s usability long time ago. That is why we started the development of Keyword Strategy Studio. It is best suited for modern keyword research that combines market and competition analysis.
… continued from history of keyword research.
It is quite clear that the old method of keyword research and web page creation will no longer work. Filling the web with spammy junk is not going to help any one. Anyway, Google and other search engines are always trying hard to get rid of these junk pages from their search results.
Using keyword research to decide your website content is like putting the cart before the horse. Instead, try the usual time tested approach.
Doing the above extra work will put you miles ahead of any one who creates automated web pages!
While doing any keyword research remember the following…
Long ago when Internet was the plaything of the geeks and the tech-savvy, there were not many sites that sold anything. Many companies and businesses didn’t even bother to grab their registered trademarks as domain names. So, it was very easy for some one to find a suitable niche that had very little Internet based competition…
Use a search engine, type in a keyword phrase and see how many web pages existed on the subject!
Then more and more people found out about the Internet. Enterprising people discovered how to make web pages and make money. Hundreds of e-books and special reports were written about finding profitable niches. Formulas were created to assess the supply and demand based on keyword search volumes.
And then software tools were born! Each new tool became more automatic than the next…
Run the software, click a button and get a list of keyword phrases that belong to the most profitable niche!
Every one started hunting niches that had high demand and low competition. Web pages were built whenever a supposedly profitable keyword was found. The page was then filled with affiliate links. Some were good, most were bad!
And then more software tools were created…
Why waste time creating a web page after a "profitable" keyword is found? Just a click a button and the software will create the web page for you!
… of course, there were junk web pages before … now the number of junk pages grew exponentially!
and then more software tools were created…
Why bother about keywords? Click the button and the software will find existing top ranked pages, grab paragraphs from here and there and automatically insert Google AdSense or affiliate links!
More junk web pages were born!
…to be continued.
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