For a number of days I’ve been unable to access the keyword selector tool over at Overture Keyword Selector tool.
Though the results lag real time searches by about 2 months, they’re good for getting an indication of search volume and related searches for given keywords and keyphrases.
In the past few weeks, there’s been speculation that with the launch of the new Yahoo! Search Marketing (AKA Panama), the Overture tool might be taken down for good.
[Incidentally, Pepperjam head honcho Kris Jones gives a good overview of Panama with his post: The New Yahoo Search (aka, Panama) Looking More & More Like Google Adwords ]
While there’s no official word from Yahoo!, it looks like traffic to Overture, while dropping since the disruption in the service sometime around mid December 2006, is still very robust.
So it was a little surprising that the Overture tool appeared to be up when I accessed it a short while ago, and ran a keyword search.
Which was a little surprising as the tool appeared to be down when I tried to access it.
In the interim, the WickedFire folks have been compiling a list of other keyword research tools. This’ll be no doubt useful if Overture is eventually removed.
Among the tools I’ve looked into, Wordze seems to be gaining popularity.
FYI, in response to the Yahoo/Overture tool problems, there are now free versions of both WordTracker and KeywordDiscovery. You can also use my free meta keywords scraper that sets up links for further research with 3 keyword tools.
Hey Andrew,
Indeed … Overture is definitely on its way out. I’ve started getting emails from Keyword Tool makers who relied on Overture in the past telling me that it’s time to give up those tools now.
I have a feeling this may have something to do with the new “relevance” score that Panama takes into account for ranking … and like Google, they want to now hide all the data … rather than reveal it. Then, they can run a mysterious system where your ad rank depends on magical things noone knows about (and they can charge you higher).
I still asking myself, are overture tools still ok? 😉
But for me, we must use more than one keyword tools and make a comparison among the data we get…
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