Google Keyword Planner

Keywords are vital for search engines. They’re also an essential ranking factor. After Google released updates on its Google Keyword Planner, most of you are wondering where you can go to for your keyword research. If you’re not using multiple tools to extend your keyword research, it might be time for you to spend on an Adwords campaign.

 

What are the changes on Google Keyword Planner?

For many years, Adwords Keyword Planner is a free resource. SEO practitioners are using it to gather data without the need to advertise on Adwords. Unfortunately, Google changed it so that detailed data will only be visible to Adwords customers with active accounts.

 

Apart from that, the tool will now have limits on the amount of detailed data that can be accessed. After you’ve reached the absolute limit, the complete data will change to data ranges.

 

But who’s affected?

Instead of answering who’s affected, Google responded to the question as to who won’t be affected. According to Google, advertisers with ongoing campaigns won’t be affected by this change. Users with an active account but no running ad campaign should start buying ads to see the detailed data.

 

If you don’t have an active campaign, you can’t access search volume data through Keyword Planner Tool. It’s no longer a technical issue. Keyword Planner data is no longer accessible to inactive users. The technical glitch that happened in June was just the result of Google’s prematurely releasing the update.

 

To use the Google Planner Tool, there are no particular spend requirements. You may pay only $50 per month to see data or you need to spend higher than $300 a month. The success rate of accessing the tool will vary on the minimum recommended bids on which you’ll be bidding.

 

When you choose to active an ad campaign, you’ll see detailed keyword data within 24 hours, as long as you meet the unspecified minimum ad spend.

 

Why is Google doing it? The company didn’t give an exact reason. However, there’s logical reason for it and that it costs money to offer users data, to compute and host data. Apart from that, some third-party keyword research tools are using data from the tool to provide their own set of data. But these tools require a lot of data from Google’s Keywords Tool. To remedy it, Google didn’t shut down those tools, but it prevented users who don’t pay for it in accessing the detailed data.