Inside AdWords: Announcing the Search-based Keyword Tool

Keyword targeting can sometimes feel like a guessing game. Potential customers are performing hundreds of millions of searches on Google, most of which you don't even know about. With so many searches, you have to guess which ones might be relevant for each of your landing pages, and hope you find the right audience for your AdWords campaigns. That's where the Search-based Keyword Tool (beta) comes in. With this new tool you can get a better sense of what your potential customers are searching for and which keywords you should advertise on.

Here's the scoop: you know that the Google search engine starts with searches conducted by users and helps them find relevant pages. But for keyword targeting, what you want is a tool that goes in the opposite direction by starting with your pages and identifying keywords that potential customers are searching on to find your products or services. The Search-based Keyword Tool does exactly this, leveraging search query data relevant to your website's content. In other words, this new tool gives you keywords that are highly relevant to your site but are not part of your AdWords campaigns. This helps you take advantage of missed opportunities.

The tool is also useful if you don't currently advertise on AdWords. For example, a shoe store could discover which footwear styles users are searching for, or a digital camera blog could decide which cameras to review by looking at which camera models attract the most queries.

The Search-based Keyword Tool is now available to all advertisers in the US and UK. We'll be expanding to additional languages and more countries in the near future. We'll also continue to develop the tool based on your feedback. Try it out at http://www.google.com/sktool, and let us know what you think.
Inside AdWords: Announcing the Search-based Keyword Tool

The Break-Up

In June we announced an advertising agreement with Yahoo! that gave Yahoo! the option of using Google to provide ads on its websites (and its publisher partners' sites) in the U.S. and Canada. At the same time, both companies agreed to delay implementation of the agreement to give regulators the chance to review it. While this wasn't legally necessary, we thought it was the right thing to do because Google and Yahoo! have been successful in online advertising and we realized that any cooperation between us would attract attention.

We feel that the agreement would have been good for publishers, advertisers, and users -- as well, of course, for Yahoo! and Google. Why? Because it would have allowed Yahoo! (and its existing publisher partners) to show more relevant ads for queries that currently generate few or no advertisements. Better ads are more useful for users, more efficient for advertisers, and more valuable for publishers.

However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.

We're of course disappointed that this deal won't be moving ahead. But we're not going to let the prospect of a lengthy legal battle distract us from our core mission. That would be like trying to drive down the road of innovation with the parking brake on. Google's continued success depends on staying focused on what we do best: creating useful products for our users and partners.
Official Google Blog: Ending our agreement with Yahoo!