Archive for the 'Keyword research' Category

Google Goggles Review

Here’s a quick rundown on Google Goggles:

Bottom line:
It is a good tool. It’s not yet the be-all end-all for defeating the Google Slap.
But it does have great value. Especially to get past whatever is slapping your keywords.

You do have to manually enter the information. But that’s worth it for important adgroups. I could imagine a “power” version that ties in with your account, pulls in the information, and gives you the breakdown. Maybe that will come later, for people that want to go through a lot of adgroups.

I don’t feel they have THE formula for how the pieces (keyword, ad, landing page, etc.) together go into the quality score. But it seems like a decent approximation.

Which is better than a lot of the overly-simplistic stuff out there, that would have you believe there’s only one main factor.
(I’ve seen tools that are just about having keywords match the landing page, like that’s ALL that’s needed to defeat the Google Slap.)

But back to Google Goggles:
Even going through the process made me think through some or factors. And a couple new things to try. The big value is that it breaks things down (as the formula sees it) into the different pieces.

For example, if it thinks your domain name is bad, it will show as a short brown bar. You click that and they give some tips. Though the tips are going to be the same each time, they’re still useful.

The user interface is a bit more cute than I need. But then it makes it more fun. So I guess I can’t hold that against it!

Anyway, I do recommend Google Goggles as a good tool to have in your toolbox. Even if not getting heavily “slapped”, it’s still a good way to increase quality, and get lower bids.

And after get it, they throw in some great bonuses.

Get full details

Here’s a sample screen shot:

Google Goggles Example

Google Goggles Example

AdWords Keyword Tool now includes search volume

Oh, and here’s some big AdWords news:
The Keyword Tool now (finally) includes search volume information.

When in the Keyword Tool there is a “Approx Avg Search Volume” column. Approx Avg Search Volume is pretty much the volume for the prior month. Though in cases where it has “Insufficient Data” for the prior month, it will do a prediction for the current month.

To me the biggest benefit to this is to be able to do quick keyword research. Especially when looking at new keyword themes, or entire new niches.
A lot better than where it just shows the bar, filled in with green, to show relative search volume. Which is practically useless!

Now it shows actual volume. And this is straight from Google. As opposed to other tools that try to estimate search volume, without having Google’s actual data.

See Google’s post on this, on their blog