What an incredibly busy week it was last week as emails went flying about the apparent death — and then sudden un-death — of the Yahoo/Overture Keyword Suggestion tool. And all the keyword tool developers went scrambling to find an alternative Overture resource because everyone's desktop keyword tools were lacking the most important thing — keywords and keyword count results.

If you want the entire skinned truth and get to the nitty gritty of the entire story, I've fully investigated it and I've had a few things clarified.

In fact, it's all clear now.

First of all, this whole event last week of the Overture tool being down is a major business lesson to the developers of desktop tools that built a business, or at least a profit stream, around software that utliized Overture's FREE keywords from a source that no one really has any control over. I was told by an independent source that there are just a few web properties that hit the Overture tool nearly 2 billion times a month. Two billion times a month!

Again, it all goes back to the fact that relying on a free source of keywords that is worn out and being hit too many times (abused) as well as not having any contractual control over its use is not wise when your keyword tool customers expect to use their keyword tool for years to come.

It's too bad most people aren't aware that the results of Overture are bunched together for various similar searches. Keyword Discovery uses the example in their FAQ answers of the following keywords being combined into one keyword count: "cheap international calling" "cheap international calls" "cheap international call" and "cheapest internal calls" — the count for all those keywords would be combined together for a total sum on the Yahoo/Overture Inventory Tool. Which means counting on that keyword count could be hazardous to the health of your website promotion and your search engine placement positions if you are not getting the real truth on which keyword is most effective.

And that's why if you are making hard core business decisions that can really have an effect on your profits, and you place your time at a premium (not in the mood to fool around), you might as well turn to the major keyword services and databases that split up the keyword data, like WordTracker and Keyword Discovery.

It's just like I recently told and was agreed upon by Chris Lee (Co-Founder) at Keywords Analzyer, the days of totally free keyword research are drawing to a near.

The signs are on the wall.

Another sign that further confirms suspicions were received by a business acquaintance of mine who told me that he had been using an automated bid checking tool to check his Adwords campaigns, bid prices, and locate the bid positions of his advertisements, etc. All the kind of stuff that he would normally do during the regular course of online business.

When the switch was made just recently by Google to charging for each search query for any Adwords bid or keyword information, he was unaware of the switch (change in terms of service) and received a bill in the mail for all those automated requests above the quota. What this means is that ANY kind of Desktop Tool that uses YOUR Google Adwords account ID or information will generate a bill for any excessive calls (searches) that you may be doing over the quotas stated in the blue hyperlink above. You should also make this a huge consideration prior to buying ANY type desktop tools in the future if you need pay-per-click data.

Then just recently, Yahoo also turned to a paid API on the interior of their Yahoo Search Marketing program. So the wind is clearly blowing in the direction that keyword research is now at a much higher premium and a much more valued commodity as many services turn to paid models.

Getting back to the Yahoo Overture tool death or undeath confirmation.

First, I spotted last week an article lastweek in DM News entitled Ode to the Yahoo Overture inventory tool.

Then I was made aware of support tickets coming into NicheBOT about Overture not returning any results.

Then I heard from the CEO of Keyword Discovery that the tool is not returning results and that perhaps it might not be returning at all.

And apparently - it was not returning results for a number of days.

So what's the real deal?

What's the whole entire truth — and why is the tool seemingly back online?

After I heard rumors and things on certain boards and I even saw one person says that they spoke to an actual Yahoo representative saying that "I have just spoken to Yahoo directly and they say their US tech team is currently working on this and they hope to get it back live soon (maybe even today!)" So I sniffed that situation out over at Webmaster World.

Then, a person with the username "Yahoo Sarah" shortly appeared and said this on the same exact post:

"Hey there,

I wanted to confirm that YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture's Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn't mean that this tool has been removed. We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year. If you are an advertiser, I'd suggest using the keyword research tool within our platform (the old or new one). YahooSarah"

Yahoo was fast on the public relations as Yahoo Sarah appeared over at SE Round Table as well with the same message.Later on, I was able to confirm later on that Yahoo will keep the tool on for some time until its replacement comes along.Will this wake people up to begin using somewhat more cleansed keyword research data (which costs a premium) or will a number of people shuffle on back and continue to the Yahoo/Overture inventory tool? Sure, properly filtered data does cost a premium, but doesn't your online business deserve it if you are turning a profit?

As I've said before in my Keyword Research Clarity for 2007 article posted last month, keyword research is far from scientific and no where close to being the exact view of what the entire world searches for, but it's a great guide. And that's what it should be used for. A guide. Which is why I say that a guide is much more useful than mere guessing is. That's for sure!

Plus, you should keep in mind that it has been reported around 50% of all new searches done Google daily are unique searches. Which tells you that you may be RANKING for keywords that you don't even know you are trying to rank for. (HINT: Check your website's logs).

And all this brings into clear perspective that we should pay less attention to the details of the numbers and more attention to the actual building of content and the amount of new content that is being published weekly. Have you set a goal for your weekly output at all?

This is where most people faulter when choosing keywords, is keyword analysis. (Analysis paralysis)

Sometimes it really is just better to just pick a word rather than worry about the KEI/Ratio and just create quality content around the keyword you chose.

Daily and weekly action equates to an accumulative (combined) total at the end of the year where you can look back and say — "Man, I really did some cool productive stuff!"

The other funny thing that came out of this Yahoo/Overture inventory tool event recently is the two major keyword services WordTracker and Keyword Discovery decided to come out with their own free keyword tool that displays 100 results to fill the Overture tool void.

WordTracker came out with theirs and slowly thereafter noticed Keyword Discovery's tool popup.

Is this is another situation where someone is screaming to have a keyword source pounded as hard as the Yahoo/Overture inventory search tool? We'll see how it plays out.

I do know one thing.

The desktop keyword developers who went through this event are now the wiser and hopefully this blog post can be an advanced lesson to those that desire to venture into this area.

Don't get me wrong, not all desktop keyword tools had this same issue. There are some which are just great at filtering keyword data and splitting your keywords up into little sub-niches like Keyword Results Analyzer by Dr. Andy Williams.

The fate of the Yahoo/Overture keyword inventory suggestion tool is still unclear.

For now, it looks like it'll hang around a while longer until another tool takes it place, which I predict will most likely have a fee to access results behind a password protected area.

One thing is for sure. There are certainly a lot of hits to the Overture inventory tool for the combined keyword count results it provides. I just wonder how long people will begin to wake up and smell the coffee that relying on free data should not even be a question when someone is conducting an online business for profit.

On that note, if you have not signed up to receive an email when our blog is updated and stay keyword informed with "The Keyword Informer" — then what are you waiting for? Go to the bottom of the home page of www.nichebot.com and sign up to become informed about the latest breaking, down to the nitty-gritty, keyword research news right from the source!

Stay tuned for some exciting and upcoming news.

Best,

Jim Morris, President/CEO

Full Throttle Enterprises, Inc.

NicheBOT - "Finds exactly what people search for."