Something B-I-G happened in the online marketplace this morning and you need to know about it…

Google has done something they say they’d never do, and it probably spells the “end” (or is it?) for services like Wordtracker (we wouldn’t want to be in their shoes now, would we? *gulp*).

Here’s the summary…

If you’ve ever used Google Adwords you’ll know they always represented search volume for a keyword by a rating out of 5.

What this means is that instead of just showing you those “green bars” - which only gave you an idea of relative search volume - you now get to see search numbers based on Google’s database.

Whatever your reason to search keywords - AdWords PPC, SEO, article marketing, blog marketing - getting real Google search counts for those keywords is a definite welcome development.

In fact, the only people who probably don’t think this is great news are the people who have developed fee-based keyword search tools (like *ahem* *ahem*). Because now, at long last, we can get up-to-the-minute search volume information from Google itself, and for free. (hooray!!)

Many of us often wondered about the purpose of Google’s keyword tool, since it didn’t actually show real numbers. Yes, it was useful for knowing whether a given search term would get a little or a lot of traffic, especially when compared to related search terms., but that was just about it, pretty much useless (sure of course now can say-lah ekeke)

This morning they scrapped that, and started showing ACTUAL SEARCH VOLUME for keywords.

Now Wordtracker keyword volumes have always been accused of being wildly inaccurate because they make predictions from only 2-3% of actual search activity.

So now that Google has made a change, more accurate search volume is finally available.

Go try it out here, enter a keyword and you’ll see Google’s estimate of actual search volume - and this is great news for us marketers!

Check it out:

Google Keyword Suggestion Tool <– (Why we LOVE them now)

How does this affect your keyword and market research?

Because now you can be absolutely sure of the size of a niche because there’s no more need to make wild guesses about search volume

In case you don’t understand Engrish, this is goooood