Search Engine Keyword Tool - Which One to Use

By: Liz Canham

If you're looking for a free way to research keywords then using a search engine keyword tool is probably a good place to start. Here's what I found from the major search engines.

The Yahoo search engine keyword tool disappeared several years ago and the page now diverts to a form for you to fill in telling them about your advertising needs. I didn't fill it in but my guess would be that it will culminate in an invitation to join the Yahoo pay per click network.

Bing is MSN's competitor to Google. The Bing search engine keyword tool is actually provided by Wordstream which provides a set of different keyword tools. The algorithm used is different to Google's and will therefore turn up different results. Here's what you get:

• A free keyword research tool which accesses a database of in excess of one billion keywords. This tool returns the top hundred related keywords but does not give search numbers, just relative frequency of search. You can email the results to yourself, however, some ten minutes after I did so the email still hadn't arrived.


• A free negative keyword research tool. You would use a negative keyword if you did not want your PPC advert to appear when certain words appeared in a search term.


• A free keyword grouping tool which allows you to paste in a list of keywords and it will sort them into profitable groups.


• A free keyword niche finder. I rather like this as you put in a search term, for example "internet marketing" and it offers lots of sub-niches such as "internet marketing affiliate" and lots of associated long-tail keywords.

Wordstream's search engine free keyword tool is in general rather limited and has probably been designed to tempt you to pay for their PPC and SEO tools. You do get the chance of a free trial.

Google's search engine keyword tool offers the following which you can download in CSV format:

• Keyword or url search.


• Choice of location, language, adult ideas and mobile search.


• Choice of categories and the inclusion or exclusion of words


• Results show global and local search figures with local trends and relative size of competition (not very accurate)

There's also a traffic estimator and trend report.

For me, there's no contest. The Google search engine keyword tool wins hands down although the Bing niche finder is useful

About the Author

For more information on keyword research visit my website Internet Marketing with Liz.

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