As of yesterday, the Google Keyword Tool has officially been replaced with the Keyword Planner. But, if what people say on Twitter is any gauge, the SEM world isn’t exactly loving Google’s new keyword planner. When you look at the tweets over the past week, “Keyword Tool” yields a score of 59 on Topsy.com. Compare that to just 45 for the term “Keyword Planner”.
In order to use the Planner, users are required to login to AdWords account to use the tool, unlike Keyword Tool before it. That seems to not be the only grumblings about the new Keyword Planner. The Planner has no match type data for search volume, no device targeting, no local vs global monthly searches, and the ability to filter by “closely related” search terms have been removed.
According to Courtney Pannell of Google, the Keyword Planner team will be bringing the closely related feature back in the upcoming weeks.
Keep in mind that not all reactions to the keyword planner or negative. There are quite a few positive comments about the keyword planner on this site as an example. New features implemented into the keyword planner includes geographic segmentation and the ability to bundle geographic regions that allow local SEO does and ad planners to drill down to the city level to obtain keyword search volume data.
The planner will allow users to upload more keywords from their own list, up to 10,000 keywords, in order to get performance data. This new tool will also show search volumes by ad group, landing pages in any other categorization you set up.
A source of contention between the two tools revolve around search volume differences. These variances are due to two key sources of contention, device types and match types getting eliminated. Here, Google explains the reason for the differences:
In general, you’ll notice that the average search volume data is higher in Keyword Planner as compared to the exact match search volume data you got with Keyword Tool. That’s because we’ll show you the average number of searches for a keyword idea on all devices (desktop and laptop computers, tablets, and mobile phones). With Keyword Tool, we showed you average search volume for desktop and laptop computers by default.
It seems at this point that Google will probably continue tinkering with the keyword planner, particularly in light of the “closely related” related feature coming back. Of course, it could simply be a matter of time that users get used to the new Keyword Planner. If not, users can opt out and use other tools for keyword research.