New: Mobile & Local Keyword Research Tool from Google

Google has come out with a new, beta version of their keyword research tool that allows users to do keyword research on mobile and local based searches.

To access the new tool, visit the old keyword research tool (located at https://adwords.google.ca/select/KeywordToolExternal) and click the link at the top of the page, shown here:

The new tool has a cleaner interface than the old keyword tool and comes with some added benefits:

1. You can now easily do research on mobile searches only. Before this option as a nicely kept “secret” only available with the internal Adwords keyword tool. This means you can tell what people are searching for using mobile phones in your area. As you may or may not be aware, the number of people on the planet who use mobile phones is in the range of 50% of the world’s population- far, far larger than the number of people who access the web right now from desktop computers. In time, mobile use of the web will likely dwarf all other forms of web access so getting a handle on what terms and phrases your customers are searching for on their mobiles is going to be a necessity as a web marketer/business owner.

To conduct a mobile keyword search only, click Advanced options and then check off the mobile box as seen below.

*click to enlarge

2. You can more accurately target your own country or a specific country from a list of countries Google provides data for. This is helpful for a number of reasons and the most obvious one to me is that using the old tool, Google told us the difference between local searches and global monthly searches but it never specified what local meant! It was impossible to tell if local meant Vancouver, or North America etc. Now, we can hone in on one of several different countries and get more targeted results. This is important for local and national advertisers alike.

Here’s a snapshot of the new tool’s interface with some keyword data populated:

*click to enlarge.

3. The final benefit I can see to this tool at first glance is your ability to add in useful metrics like approximate cost per click, competition levels, and your ad share or the percentage of time your ads are shown compared to total number of ads being shown (available if you’re logged into Adwords).

So all in all I like the new look.

There is one serious drawback that I didn’t see a resolution for at first glance, the old keyword tool separates keywords into groups for you which is very handy when setting up Adwords accounts or analyzing a site to see what Google understands it is all about. If that feature’s available in this version I missed it at first glance. If not, I’ll continue using the old tool for now.

Tweet This Post  Plurk This Post  Buzz This Post  Delicious This Post  Digg This Post  Ping This Post  Reddit This Post  Stumble This Post