Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner

The new keyword tool to replace the current external tool will have a few additional features that you might like. Upon landing on the Keyword Planner,  you are greeted with a few options that are somewhat different than what you are used to in the Keyword Tool. Here you are presented with a list of things to do when arriving at the Keyword Planner:

• Search for keyword and ad group ideas
• Enter or upload keywords to see how they perform
• Multiply keyword lists

Searching for keyword ideas allows you to insert a category or topic and the planner will spit out a bunch of keyword ideas for your product or service. You can also type in your home page it will give you a list of possible keywords that would apply to your site.

Entering keywords simply shows you how the keywords are doing and what kind of statistics are behind them. This is what you are mostly familiar with in the former Keyword Tool.

The keyword multiplier is a very handy tool especially if you have several descriptive keywords that can be combined. You can multiply as many lists together to see the different variations of keyword possibilities and how well they do on Google.

What is the difference between Keyword Tools and Keyword Planner?

The new Keyword Planner has a few additional tools that make it somewhat better. For instance each keyword search tool has the ability to narrow the results down by targeting it to a certain area of world, country, or state as well as include negative keywords. This may be helpful if you are a local business that is targeting just a few local cities and you would like to know important keywords for that area.

Within each keyword results page, they show the timeline of the amount of searches per keyword over the course of a few months. This might be interesting for seasonal keywords such as Christmas decorations or Halloween candy but if you are a year round product or service this feature may not be as useful for you.

Overall the biggest difference I can see is the fact that you have to log in to use the new Keyword Planner. I am not sure the reason behind Google doing this. Perhaps they are trying to gather more information about their keyword tool users or maybe it would allow users to purchase ads easier if they are already logged in. In the end, they are similar tools and all you have to do is log in now. In fact, if you are logged in already and you click on the Keyword Tools button in the navigation, it will automatically redirect you to the new Keyword Planner. Google most likely has motives for doing so and they are trying to get as many people to move over to the new Keyword Planner in the near future before they shut down keyword tools for good.

In case you want to know more about the tool’s additional minor features, check out this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMRxu-_GghE