Nucite Network

Up until just a couple months ago, I was happy to pay Trellian about seventy dollars a month to use their Keyword tool.  I used it to understand how much search volume individual keywords were getting.  It was also providing me with the longer tail keyword phrases that were related to the keyword I was searching for and the approximate search volume for those long-tail terms respectively.  The obvious downside to Trellian was that their numbers didn't do much for me in respect to how much search volume a term was actually getting in a month.  However, having used that tool for quite some time, I basically knew how to read the numbers to get a feel for how valuable a given keyword was to me.  All the while I was essentially making best guesses at how much search volume Google was seeing for a given term.

The Google AdWords Keyword Tool has recently made my life a whole lot easier.  A couple months back they started including monthly search volume for keywords (both averages and numbers for the past month).  All of the guess work is now gone.  Not only can I see how much search volume a term gets, I can also see how stiff the advertising competition is for that term (essentially how valuable it is) and I am provided with a list of "related terms" for that keyword.

I do all of this keyword research when I am either considering a domain name purchase or once a purchase (or joint-venture) has been made and it's time to develop.  The search volumes guide me in the right directions.  And those related terms are a quick and dirty way for me to understand how Google looks at the term(s) I'm considering.  The related terms don't do much for me in determining how valuable a domain is worth, but they do provide me with the synonyms and related topics that I should be including in the sites I'm developing.

So now I can't help but wonder if the Trellian tool will stay useful.  My guess is that it will need to evolve a bit.  It was nice to be able to use that tool to analyze monthly trends by volume, but again, the accuracy of the number just wasn't there.  Maybe they'll find new and innovative ways to work with the newly available Google data and make me a subscriber again down the road.  Good luck Trellian!