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Farewell to Yahoo!’s Overture keyword suggestion tool (the burial and a rant)

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Welcome to another late-breaking edition of The Keyword Informer.

I’m glad you could attend this long awaited funeral of sorts (it’s been long overdue).

What’s going on?

It was just over a year ago that the Overture keyword suggestion tool was showing signs of trouble when it disappeared for approximately four days. Just when everyone thought it was gone, Yahoo! representatives suddenly appeared in the forums and announced that the tool would remain available, but no longer maintained.

Apparently, Yahoo! decided to continue extending the life of this tool that has been battered and beaten up by hundreds of sites and desktop software tools that pilfer the currently stale data (I’ll explain that in a minute).

Sure – NicheBOT also gave results from the Overture tool at the request of its members that wanted it and I’m very much about “give the people what they want.” ;)

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Filed Under: Keyword Research
  • http://www.rightarticlemarketing.com/ Alex Newell

    Great funeral, where’s the wake?

    And please get a life anybody that seriously wants to use this out of date, misleading so called keyword research tool.

    Thank You Jim!

    Alex

  • Sasikumar R Nair

    A fit burial. For the last 1 year or so, its been more like a rolling wheel coming to a stop(living out its momentum). Yahoo have been doing precious nothing towards maintaining it. Thats an open secret. And as they themselves admit, its a tool thats available but no more maintained. Well whats the use of a tool like that at least for keyword research which is best if its current?

  • http://hubpages.com/hub/Natural-Health-and-Wellness-Website Vitallywell

    So long ole friend. You were my first. I will always remember what we had.

  • http://mindpowersource.net D.C. Wartenberger

    excellent furneral speech and I couldn’t agree more.
    Some “Gurus” need to re-write certain reports and
    blueprints now ;)

    Superp!

    Dougi

  • Kevin

    Perfect, usable results? Does Rika know the Overture data is over a year old, making the results far from perfect? Who would build their business on outdated data that may not even be close to accurate? Imagine paying to have a product created in a niche that Overture says gets 30,000 searches a month, only to discover AFTER investing time and money that said niche now only gets 5,000 searches, or less even.

    Talk about a recipe for failure.

  • Matthew

    Thanks for the update – it looks like you’ll need to update your intro/tutorial videos from on, because they integrate Overture throughout, and that way you can include Google Cruncher too.

  • http://tinyurl.com/3x7cwh Nancy

    I personally was dishartened to find Overture However, the new tools coming out appear to be gaining some ground in the right direction. Great information–thanks for sharing!

  • http://www.insomnia-connection.com Wendy Owen

    Hi Jim. thanks for another great article.
    People continue to use the Overture tool because they’re comfortable with it. Most people dislike change even when they know there’s something better.
    We’ve just got to let go and move on!
    Wendy

  • http://www.go-carts-guide.com rob lear

    REST (120,567 overture results)
    IN (45,678 overture results)
    PEACE (89,644 overture results)
    OVERTURE (345,345 overture results)

    * Great niche markets above. LOL
    I was going to use the real overture stats results but, of course it was not working, HA ! HA! HA!
    R.I.P overture, hope it does not return from the dead like a gearge romero movie mumbling singular and plural groans in USA speak and german.

  • Ian C

    Beautiful service Jim!

    I wish I’d brought a hankerchief though.

    Seriously, the fact that you have given the Overture tool a send off whilst keeping it available for those who choose to use it shows your integrity in my eyes.

    I would only use it for nostalgic reasons now really. I rememebr a time – in the 90′s – when it was pretty much all we had. Now, it is not time well spent if good keyword research is your aim.

    Even before it’s demise these past 12 months, there are better tools available now – not least NicheBot, of course – which provide more substantial, pertinent results.

    RIP from me!

    Ian

  • http://www.cbprofitmachine.com/aff.htm CB Profit Machine

    Yes Jim, someone needed to say it. Sadly there are many products that still use this tool, or mention it, and most newbies won’t know why they can’t access it. I knew about it going down but was unaware it wasn’t being updated since last year.
    So Thanks

  • http://www.pay-per-play.org/ Get Paid for Every Visitor to your site!

    I am so sad I don’t know if I can go on. Sniff, sniff.

    I look at it’s death as a new era for the more powerful and more precise tools of today.

    RIP

    Ted

  • http://www.weightloss-guaranteed.com Claude Fullinfaw

    Hi Jim

    I really looked forward to each and every email from you and listen to the saved broadcast often. I have learnt so much from you and the site at Nichebot is invaluable to me.

    I have managed to scale back my PPC programs now and am only doing atricle marketing using your service.

    Once again thanks so much. God Bless

    Claude Fullinfaw- Brisbane
    http://www.Blogging4TheFuture.com

  • http://www.nichebot.com The NicheBOT Guy

    Thanks for the comments all!

    Rob — great niche assessment.

    Ian — here’s a handkerchief — you can use mine.

    Matthew — we’ll definitely be updating the tutorials and especially the tour videos.

    Now will someone at Yahoo finally just pull the plug. :D

  • http://www.nutritionarticlesonline.com Stephanie Rolfe

    About time! As an Internet Marketing newbie, I am getting so sick of reading guru PDFs (many I actually paid for) that recommend Overture as their main keyword search tool. Maybe now those gurus will wake up and update their materials with some integrity! They’re ALL need to take a look at what they’re selling to us newbies and update the relevancy of what they’re charging outrageous amounts of money for. Thank you Jim, needed that vent, Stephanie Rolfe CNC

  • http://www.internetmasterycenter.com Nelson Tan

    Let Microsoft buy over and bury it…

  • http://www.1920x1080p.co.uk 1920x1080p

    Overture, it was great to use you..

    I always couldn’t get my head around why most of the times you gave results the multiple kewords we in alphabetically order and not in the order people were typing.

    Mally

  • http://www.affiliatemarketersbootcamp.com James Martell

    Jim,

    I am not sure why they didn’t kill the tool long ago. I am very glad YOU did.

    It was a great tool for its time. I used it a lot.

    RIP from me too!

    James

  • Jack

    Yes Pasteur Jim, Amen!

    It’s like an advisor you go to when you need help but they are never home!

    P.S. My condolences to the family!

  • http://ryanwegman.com Ryan Wegman

    Words of wisdom and a dignifying eulogy. I am new to this keyword research and I have no use for a tool that is not giving me proper data.

    The fact that people are charging for out dated info really chaps my @$%#%.

    Jim you are awesome keep up the great work and hopefully with a bit of practice I will be half as good as you.

  • Robert Vavra

    Thanks for giving us this straight-forward information and historical perspective, Jim. I’m new to internet marketing and have encountered several on-line tutorials and eBooks that recommended the use of Overture tool. I wasn’t sure if I was doing something wrong when I tried to access the tool.

  • http://theprofitpulr1.blogspot.com/ Paul

    Hey Jim,

    I gotta say, that actually brought tears to my eyes :-(

    You have to admit, like you said, Ovy was great for
    a quick idea or two!

    Thanks!

  • Chris Garvey

    Well It’s About Time,

    One of the many things that p*ss me off about so called gurus is that for the past 3 or 4 months I’ve been getting certain ‘advice’ or ebooks (supposedly ‘new’) that STILL recommend using this tool. As you said, it’s not been updated for 14 months now. If you do a search on it (when it’s working) you’ll see the results blatantly state ‘from Jan 07′. Boy they were serious when they said they wouldn’t be updating or maintaining it. These results are pretty much useless it seems to me.

  • rrkbhat

    Hi Jim,

    I’m curious to know why Yahoo allowed first of its kind and a popular tool like Overture to die?

    Is it a poor strategy on the part of Yahoo?

  • http://www.affiliatemarketingintro.com Affiliate Marketing Introduction

    Sad about yhe overture keyword suggestion tool.
    To give it the credit it is due, for a long time this was a very useful tool. A lot of other software partially based their search results on this tool

    The news is that Yahoo seeks to replace this with another tool.

    Don’t know how true this is because it has been a year now and nadha

  • http://www.nichebot.com The NicheBOT Guy

    Rrkbhat,

    The reason Yahoo let the tool die out is because
    they transferred everything over to their Yahoo
    Search Marketing division while the Pay-Per-Click
    engine they purchased (Overture) was phased
    out.

    Yahoo Search Marketing didn’t make the mistake of
    allowing their keyword tool out to the public and
    now requires a Yahoo Search Marketing account in
    order to use that tool.

    So it’s not really a matter of a poor strategy move
    on their part — it was really a poor strategy on
    the part of Overture back in the days when they
    released the tool to the public. It should have
    stayed protected behind a login requiring an account.

    Yahoo Search Marketing has now rectified that and
    ultimately, this shows that Keyword Research is now
    at a premium.

    Hope that explains it for ya…

    Best,

    Jim

  • http://www.bestdietpills-proactol.com/ Best diet pill that works

    Hey Jim,

    Thanks for been the officiating priest at the official ceremony :)

    Truly for those of us just starting out some not too long ago, the Overture tool really provided the platform upon which we launched our online business.

    But I made lots, and lots of mistakes. I over relied on everything it says.

    Hmmm …. but stopped using it since 2006 when it shows sign slow death. And it has finally been killed. Bye the good old boy – OVERTURE :)

  • http://www.pamelaegan.com/ Pamela Egan

    Have there been any recent updates regarding the Yahoo keyword-research tool? I stopped fooling around with it about a year ago when I concluded the numbers were inflated to the point of losing any value they may have once had.

    However, I continue to come across occasional rumblings that the Y keyword tool is either back, or will return in a new-and-improved grand reappearance.

    I’ve been using the free wordtracker tool lately, and have been keeping an eye out for a second potential source of keyword data.

    Will this tool make a return, and do you have any ideas or suggestions about an alternative to WT that might provide a second-opinion, so to speak?

  • http://www.affiliate-marketing101.com/niche-affiliate-marketing.html Kevin

    You can try and think up keywords yourself, but it’s absolutely essential to use software tools such as SiteBuildIt’s “Brainstorm” tool in order to design a blueprint for your niche affiliate marketing site. Other options include downloadable programs such as the Nichebot keyword tool, or sign up with Wordtracker which is used by many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) professionals.

    Please read my article “Niche Affiliate Marketing Starts with Keyword Research”