Paid Keyword Tools such as WordTracker and Keyword Discovery have been around for some time and are regarded as some of the most widely used and recommend Keyword Research Tools. However, since the introduction of Search Volume Numbers in Google AdWords Keyword Tool, it seems that Google is about to throw the other keyword tools (especially the paid ones) out of business and might render them altogether useless.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool with ‘ Search Volume Numbers’ indicator:

Google has begun to tighten the leash on the websites that try to get around the Google Webmaster Guidelines. In a latest post at Search Engine Roundtable, it has been reported that Google has admitted that, it has penalized Newsday.com, a premier news website for “selling links that pass PageRank.” This move has been made in the wake of violation of the Webmaster Guidelines, as stated by Google.

Recently, a post was put up at the Google Groups, discussing this very situation and Google’s immediate response was this:

“Thanks for your post. I’m glad you’re posting here in the Webmaster Help Group, because the discussions here help educate webmasters around the globe. I just checked over newsday.com and compared it to the most recent version of newsday.com that was indexed by Archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20070829225145/http://www.newsday.com/

Google has finally added a new display metric known as ‘Approximate Search Count’ to the Google AdWords keyword tool. This feature will be displayed alongside the color graphs, that till now was the only means that served as an indicator of the data in the keywords tool. Now, when you perform a search on the keywords tool, your results will be displayed with ‘Approx Search Volume’ and ‘Approx Avg Search Volume’ as data indicators along with the color graphs.

Over at the Webmaster World, there is a highly informative post put up by one of the members, that tells us about the importance of ‘Punctuations’ in the keywords for the Google Search Results. Below is the post that has most certainly gathered a lot of appreciation from other members of the Webmaster World.

Post:

“Various punctuation characters have a noticeable impact on search results – mostly from a searcher perspective. As a webmaster, you may find that your users include punctuation in some keywords, and so it can be of use to know what the effect on the results they see is. And besides, knowing how to search Google is one step towards understanding how Google works. This is a spot check of the current handling of punctuation by Google.

Webmasters at the Webmaster World are stunned and experiencing quite dramatic ranking changes in the Google SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages). According to the threads, these ranking fluctuations have been occurring because of the July 2008 Google SERP Changes.

For example, a highly targeted website with appreciable performance has suddenly lost all traffic. The Webmasters also report that for the month of July this year, the short tail searches are starting to surface but long tail results have vanished into thin air.

Here are some interesting excerpts from Webmaster World:

“Has anyone recovered from June 4th catastrophe?”

According to the Google AdWords API blog, Google has released the Traffic Estimator Service for Google AdWords API. It is one of the most essential tools for the Webmasters, as it helps them by providing estimates (CPC, clicks per day, etc) for the existing and as well as for the new keywords for a new product or service.

According to Googler AdWords API blog, “AdWords API users can access our trove of historical keyword and bid data via the Traffic Estimator Service, which gives detailed estimates of how much traffic a keyword may generate at various CPC values. The service is not only useful for new products or campaigns, but it can also estimate the impact of changing the Max CPC of existing keywords as well.”

According to the MSN Virtual Earth Blog, Ask.com has thrown out its mapping platform for Ask Maps and is now using Microsoft Virtual Earth as its new platform.

Ask.com is using Microsoft Virtual Earth for Ask Maps, Ask City (search for Businesses, Events and Movies per US City) and their Web Search including the Bird’s Eye view. The new integration is as of now visible in the United States only. However, speculations are that other countries such as Japan, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK that are still running the Ask Maps in the Beta phase will be reverting to the new platform very soon.

According to Webmaster World, the google.co.uk domain is undergoing SERP changes, that is a part of the ‘July 2008 Google.co.uk SERP Changes’. Due to this, the Webmasters are experiencing severe ranking fluctuations for their websites in this domain.

Here are some of the interesting posts from the Webmaster World thread:

“I decided to perform an experiment last weekend and constructed a brand new 35 page promotional brochure site on a 14 year old .co.uk. This .co.uk has been pointing at our .com for a couple of years now and both have been hosted in the U.K. from inception.

In an interview with Eric Enge at the Search Marketing Expo Advanced, Matt Cutts, the Head of Google Webspam Team, spoke about link building and gave his views on the same. Matt Cutts stressed on the fact that the best links are those that are original research and provide value to readers for example, in the form of a Firefox extension. Moreover, he also expressed his concern over too many reciprocal links. Here are some excerpts from the interview with Eric Enge:

Yahoo! has announced, the completion of formalities for its multi-year advertising deal with the retail-king Walmart. The new deal will enable Walmart to use Yahoo’s advertising platform and simultaneously, Yahoo! will be become the sole platform for the online display of Walmart’s advertisements and inventory.

As per the new deal, Yahoo! will use its existing abundance of leading brand advertisers for Walmart, as its primary marketing and sales channel for its video display and advertising. Through the use of Yahoo’s AMP (Advertising Management Program), Yahoo! has also taken the responsibility for Walmart’s ad pricing, targeting, delivery and reporting. This would mark Walmart as another addition to Yahoo’s AMP. In a related AMP news, Yahoo! has also announced its multi-year Global Partnership with Havas Digital, where Havas too, will be borrowing heavily on Yahoo’s AMP.