I received an e-mail from Google, telling me about their new search-based keyword tool!

They state “the Search-based Keyword Tool compares the content of your website against actual Google search queries to provide a list of relevant keywords which you don’t currently have in your AdWords campaigns. This new tool can help your business to grow and innovate on your keyword choices by taking the guesswork out of the process. Rather than adding keywords to an ad campaign based on what one thinks a user might search on, this tool enables you to manage your keywords based on what you know users are searching on.”

I visited the tool & was presented with a list of over 800 keyphrases, which Google says have been searched for & appear on relevant pages in my site. I decided to pick all the phrases that had a suggested cost per click up to and including £1.00 (246 of them).

I’ve spent the last 4 hours adding the phrases to my AdWords campaign, targeting the landing pages to the ones indicated by the Tool & using the suggested bids. However, as soon as I checked the keywords, all bar one are not displaying due to the bid amount being too low (even though it was the one suggested!). The quality score of the landing pages are also deemed poor, despite them being the ones that sparked off the whole process!

So, thanks Google; for suggesting I use your new tool; only to find that despite following all your suggestions, you STILL don’t display any of my ads unless I bid some ridiculous amount per click! I’ve just basically wasted an entire afternoon on this nonsense & on top of it, the new interface is rubbish! It’s slow, jerky & very frustrating to use.

What on earth is the point in giving me this information, which appears to be totally useless? Their e-mail ended:

“The Search-based Keyword tool actually found 2954 recently-searched keywords related to your site. For each suggested keyword, the tool will also show you:

• The average number of searches per month
• The competitive bidding level for each term
• The estimated bid to appear in the top three ad positions
• The suggested landing page for each keyword

To see all 2954 new keywords and decide which ones to add to your campaigns, go to www.google.com/sktool, sign in to your AdWords account, and enter your website URL. We hope that you find the Search-based Keyword Tool useful in driving even more business to your website through Google AdWords!”

Errrrrr! No it isn’t useful, has wasted my time & has not given me any new (& reasonably priced), keyphrases that I can bid on!

I will definitely not be returning to AdWords any time soon!