Well, I might be a bit late to the party on this one, but today I ran across the new Search-Based Keyword Tool (SKT)that Google implemented back in November. (If you’ve already discovered & used it, please feel free to leave a comment telling me any fabulous tricks you’ve come across with it!)

So…My first thought was, “Neat, but how does it differ from the existing Adwords Keyword Tool (AKT)?” Considering you can use both to find real search phrases based on your site… I was curious to find some differences.

Well, according to Google,

“The main difference between the Search-based Keyword Tool and the Keyword Tool currently in AdWords is that the former generates keyword ideas based on your website, and identifies those currently not being used in your AdWords account. Additionally, the Search-based Keyword Tool provides more detailed data for each keyword, such as category information, suggested bid that may place the ad in the top three spots of a search results page, and ad/search share.”

Ultimately, what they’ve done here is to give Adwords/CPC advertisers an easy way to grab some more relevant keywords for campaigns, landing pages, etc and easily stick them into Adwords campaigns. Of course, this is a nice financial win for Google (more keywords = more ads displayed = more money) but if the keywords it recommends bring in more conversions for marketers’ campaigns, it’s a win for them too.

Back to Google’s description of the differences between the two tools…. as you’re likely aware already, the Adwords Keyword tool can also pretty easily generate keyword ideas based on your website by using the “website content” button instead of the “Descriptive words or Phrases button”.

However, the SKT presents it more efficiently and distinctively than the AKT… instead of a hodgepodge of keywords assorted by keyword relevance, the SKT nicely displays not only the general category for the keywords but also the specific page on your site that it forumulated the keywords from.

Not that you couldn’t do it on a page-by-page basis with the AKT… but that would take far too long to be of much use.

Instead, the SKT makes it much faster & easier, even allowing you to group the keywords it generates based on the page they were generated from, allowing you to find out just what Google thinks every single page in your site is about…. very helpful for SEO, relevance & PPC testing, and so much more.

Additionally… the SKT seems to have more refined estimates as far as the Cost Per Click (CPC) prices go.

One of the main columns presents the predicted cost to get you into the top 1-3 ad positions on a page. In the AKT however, all you get is the “estimated average CPC”, which from my experience can vary widely.

This is not to say that your real-world CPC is always going to match the SKT prediction, but chances are it will be a lot closer… especially if you have a good Quality Score (QS), meaning your Ad headling, Ad text, Ad grouping, and landing page (among other factors) are all highly relevant to each other.

Finally, the SKT adds some fantastic filtering options for marketers really looking for certain kinds of keywords to add.

For instance, looking for more keywords for your “Improve your Golf Game” niche that have at least 12,000 searches a month, low-medium competition, with a suggested top-3 bid of $0.40-$0.70 where the URL contains “Golf Game”? Well, now you can find those keywords – and add them to your Adwords account and begin seeing results quickly.

So, while the SKT may not redefine the Keyword Research process, it does allow you to “see your site” through Google’s relevancy eyes, looking for extra profitable keywords that you may have missed – and extra places to tighten up your overall relevancy. And sometimes, that’s really all there is between a wildly successful campaign, and one that just ends up costing you money.

Link (tool): Google Search-Based Keyword Tool

Looks like Brad Callen’s decided the old PPC Web Spy look & feel was a bit too.. gloomy!?

Not only that, but he’s fixed a number of bugs in it as well, so if you downloaded it the other day (read my review here, you’ll want to download the new version for free here.)

Lots of the changes are GUI-based… but there’s a few others that are just nice feature upgrades/enhancements. Check it out here.

As internet marketers who work with Google Adwords well know, competition is key. Not only can you use it to judge if a niche market is profitable, you can also use your competition as the template to write your ads from.

If an ad’s been there a few weeks or more, it’s probably successful, and if you’re considering bidding on the keyword that brought it up, you might want to make note of what ad text they’re using.

Recently, Brad Callen sent me an email about his new tool, PPC Web Spy, and after checking it out, I have to say that I’m really impressed.

In a nutshell, PPC Web Spy is a Firefox Plugin that augments your ad research by allowing you to view which keywords your competition is bidding on as well as basic related data like Ad Position, CPC,  and other figures PPC advertisers need to know doing basic keyword research for PPC campaigns.

One of my favorite parts about PPC Web Spy is the fact that it also shows the ad’s destination URL, making it easy to get a feel for the relevancy score between the competition’s ad and their lander, and pick up any tricks or techniques they might be successfully using to drive conversions off their site.

Another very helpful feature about PPC Web Spy it is that it shows only data from advertisers who have been on Adwords for the last 45 days.

Initially, this might seem to be a limitation… but if the competitions been advertising for the last 45 days, chances are they’re making money. Or else not realizing they’re losing it. Either way, you win, and some decent information to factor into your own PPC Adwords campaign.

So, if you’re an Adwords marketer & haven’t checked out PPC Web Spy yet, you should. It will simplify your life while increasing your profits and exposing new keywords to drive traffic from. And as with everything on Pushing the Free Line, it’s free.

Click here for Brad Callen’s PPC Web Spy