Marty has confirmed that the ubiquatous Google Adwords Keyword Tool now no longer shows long and medium tail terms. This is pretty damaging for SEO’s who often rely on this tool for keyword research and as a way of gaining insight into a market. Luckily Marty has put together a list of alternative tools for us to use (paid and unpaid).
Guess its time to look for alternatives to long-standing Google tools as they seem to be systematically being removed from popular use.
I have found that the “Web CEO” software program is a good alternative …if you happen to be familiar with SEO. There is a free version and the professional version (expensive at $379 USD). If you plan on using the free version, buy a good book on SEO stuff and read it all first !
The free version offers only five lines of search results for each search. But tweaking further will bring you a gold mine.
If you put in the effort to understand how it works, it will beat the daylights out of the other tools. If you’re a bit lazy …forget it. I would recommend it strongly to people who accept that a learning curve can be steep.
Roll up your sleeves and it’s a gold mine for long tail jobs.
Very interesting, I thought that by “long term” they meant that searched would not bring the same results if it is based on a long term key phrase.
Hi Lucas, you mean LONG TAIL. Long Tail are search terms of 3 or 4 words put together, these typically occur when a searcher is nearing the end of the sales cycle i.e. they now know the product they want to buy and are looking for the best price. Long tail searches tend to be low volume but high conversion because of this.
Also the long tail keywords tend to be less competitive, if you don’t have alot of time or a big budget for SEO it is better to have alot of long tail phrases that are racking highly rather than a few highly competitive keywords that don’t get on the first pages as they will never be seen!