Google’s new tool for SEO/SEM spying

[royfurr]

Posted this to my blog, now posting here. What do you think?

Just got notice today of a new tool from Google. It’s designed to help you identify keywords you can use to generate new SEM traffic, that you’re not taking advantage yet. But there’s another (almost secret) use this tool has.

Spying.

You see, you can enter any website into the tool and see the 100 most-commonly searched for terms that match pages on that website. You don’t have to be the website owner to do this. So you can search on your own sites. Or a competitor’s.

I think you can see the value in this.

The tool is called Google Search-Based Keyword Tool and is available at: google [dot] com /sktool/

(can't link yet in here)

The ability to search on other peoples’ sites or sites you don’t have AdWords accounts linking to may be removed, if Google gets wind this is being used to gain competitive intelligence (none of the promotion materials indicate that this is what the tool is for). So use it now while it’s available.

And let me know what you think.

[dburk]

Hi royfurr,

It's a nice tool but it only lets your see keywords your competitors are not already using. Still, this is nice information to have.

[royfurr]

dburk,

Are you sure that's how it works? From everything I read it shows organic keywords for a site -- and if you're logged into an AdWords account it will exclude everything in that AdWords account. So it's hard to tell but I think if you're NOT logged into an AdWords account it will show the top organic keywords for any site you put in. I could easily be wrong. I'm still figuring the tool out.

Thanks for your input.

Roy

[PalatnkFactor]

I blogged about this tool here: New Google Search Based Keyword Tool | PalatnikFactor.com

It does actually show some keywords which you dont have in your adwords BUT some of the keywords you already have do trigger those words which the tool shows.