I find the AdWords Keyword Tool to be a really great way to proactively manage accounts by identifying negatives before they have resulted in traffic and expense in my clients accounts. I truly appreciate (or did appreciate) the keyword tool for helping me identify negative keywords vs. relying only on the Search Query Report where you are identifying keywords that have already resulted in a click/expense. The beauty of the tool is it assists in identifying negatives ahead of time before it costs you money.
Problem is, the newest version of the Keyword Tool – the now only version of the keyword tool in all my clients accounts, does not include the option to identify and add negative keywords. I can only assume this was some kind of oversight on Googles part.
I have reviewed the page over and over looking for the negative keywords option and there is nothing. Luckily there is a link to the ‘previous interface’ which will take you to the old tool. I am afraid many people will not notice this – see screenshot below marked in Green. This new Keyword Tool (beta) is active as the default internal tool so using the previous interface is your best bet as an internal keyword tool to allow you to review suggestions based on your actual adwords account.
Can we use this latest keyword tool to identify and add negative keywords?
I have posed the question to Google and will update this post if I receive any official comment.
2/23/10 Update – No official comment yet but AWP Stephen aka @adwordshelper on twitter kindly responded letting me know he was forwarding a copy of this article to the appropriate product team at Google – Thanks Stephen!
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 Article by: +Kim Clinkunbroomer Clinks Web Service a Google AdWords Partner Company Subscribe: RSS Feeds | Follow me on Twitter |
I really like the new tool, especially when you export to CSV and can see a years traffic by month. One thing that is really bugging me however, is the fact that you can’t limit the results to the keywords that you input (Like you could in the old tool) instead, your keyword input is mixed in amongst the synonyms that Google decide are relevant. This is probably a move to irritate SEO’s looking for specific keyword info but it bugs me when I’m trying to focus on select keywords for a PPC campaign. Gripe over, thanks for the airtime Kim.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for stopping by! I do agree the keyword tool does have some great new features but I agree that there are also a few drawbacks and overall it could be even better.
The lack of negative data is a concern for me because I used the tool for that constantly. Good that we have the old too to revert to but I expect that will one day not be an option and hope google works this ‘stuff’ out before they pull the plug on the old tool.
Thanks again for stopping by and the comment!
Kim
Is it possible for you to explain how to get negative kws using their old tool?
Hi Shawn,
Sure I have a video linked below.
The screenshot above shows how to get to the old tool – see the previous interface link marked in green in the screenshot above.
Here is a link to a youtube video I put together on identifying and adding negatives using the old tool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECzlpljgDks
The beginning of the video will show you how to find the tool which is not relevant to you any longer since the new tool is what we are offered currently but the video will get into how to use the keyword tool so hang on for that part.
Hope it helps and leave me a comment if you find it helpful.
Kim
Every time Google changes the AdWords tools it is usually a mixture of
Great! Finally!
and
That is all fine and dandy, but it really screws up the way I was doing things.
Luckily it is often more of the former than the latter.
Makes me think that one of the dominant traits in an AdWords skill set is experience with and aptitude in changing along with the product.
As always AWHE’s A-lister (Kim) is all over this latest change. Great insight as to how a real in the trenches Pro thinks and adjusts to the ever changing AdWords landscape.
-T
I think you could pick up that comment and use it as a blog post. What you wrote is great advice any way that you look at it.
Right on the mark Kim. I love the new tool in general, but this seems like it should have been a no-brainer when they designed the interface. Hopefully the GOOG can fix this quickly.
On the old interface when you did a search with synonyms checked, it brought back the results in groups. In the first group it showed all the highly relevant, related search terms. This made it really easy to export those keywords, and continue your search for keywords. In the new tool, it brings back all those groupings of keywords into the same list, making it very difficult to pick out the relevant keywords, and therefore find good, relevant keywords that you hadn’t thought of. It would be great if Google went back to this grouping method to help us find the most relevant keywords, and new keywords ideas.
Hi Kim
1. Just wandering if you recieved any feedback from Google on the negatiev match type missing from the new keyword tool
2. for those of us who want to see tdata just for keywords we enter I you should try Traffic Estimator under Tools