Search Engines Frank Ross on 16 May 2007 06:56 pm
Yahoo and their Relative Keyword Tool
I did a post over on my Home Business blog about Yahoo! and their new Keyword Research Tool which is supposed to replace the old Overture Keyword Tool. Difference is, this one has only relative indicators which puts Yahoo! on par with Google and MSN. Why do these Search Engines not want to reveal the numbers behind each keyword?
I can think of two possible reasons. The first is the fact that such data is considered proprietary and highly secret. So I would ask: if they tell us that 240,000 searches were done for ‘ebay home business’ last month on their network, is that such a big secret? Perhaps it should be something they could charge for. I for one, would be happy to pay for Google’s quantitative search data.
A second reason I can think is that it’s too difficult and perhaps not worth their trouble. Considering all the disparate data centers these Search Engines maintain, it might a big task to aggregate all that data on every possible keyword. It seems that Yahoo Overture did it, although their data points were sometimes called into question by many SEOs.
So that leaves us with WordTracker which does still give us quantitative search data. Although their quantitative data is also proprietary and has been drawn into question. In the meantime, I guess we have to think in relative terms when doing keyword research.
Tags: Yahoo! Search Marketing, Overture Keyword Tool, Yahoo! Keyword Tool, Yahoo! Keyword Research
on 01 Jun 2007 at 12:06 pm 1.James Chillcott said …
Boy,
I just spent all night trying to figure out where that Overture Keyword Assistant went!
We spent years over here at Advoca using that thing as a touchstone for figuring out best practices for different keyword sets.
Relative rankings for keywords just don’t cut it when you are doing precision seo work and you need to know if web design is more popular than web development and the relative engines just call them both “average”.
Someone please call out if a precision oriented and reliable keyword results tool rears onto the scene…for now we’ll have to make due with the UK version of the Overture Keyword Assistant, located here and still operational: http://inventory.uk.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
on 01 Jul 2007 at 9:36 am 2.Trevor Ginn said …
I can think of 2 reasons why this might have happened
1. Protecting commercial information. If Yahoo give information about their search volume then competitors can make inferences about their business
2. Privacy. Their may be an issue about saying what people are searching for.
This kind of data can be obtained from providers such as hitwise but this costs $$$$ or ££££££