• http://www.googlekeywordtool.com/

Tools that are on the Google Keyword Tool Box page:

• Google Keyword Tool
• Google Webmaster Tools
• Google Gadgets
• Google Labs
• Google Chrome Browser
• Google Adsense
• Google +1 Button
• Google Trends
• Submit a Site
• Google Analytics
• Free Google Products
• Google SEO Starter Guide

Google offers a list of tools for search engine marketing (Google Adwords PPC and organic SEO):

• Google SEM tools
• Google SEM tools 2011 update

A list of keyword tools:

• SEM keyword research tools
• Bing keyword tool

Keyword tools specifically for Chinese search engine marketing:

• Chinese keyword research tools
• Baidu keyword research tool

The updated Google SEM tools for 2011:

Google Adwords Search

Plan/Create:

• Insights for Search
• Keyword Tool
• Traffic Estimator
• Related Searches
• Adwords Editor

Place/Target:

• Bid Simulator
• Ad Preview Tool
• Locations / Languages
• Ad Scheduling
• Seller Rating
• Automated Rules
• Conversion Optimizer
• Remarketing

Measure/Track:

• Conversion Tracking
• Search Funnels
• Analytics
• Website Optimizer

Google Adwords Content Network

Plan/Create:

• Insights for Search
• DoubleClick Ad Planner
• Display Ad Builder
• Related Searches
• Adwords Editor

Place/Target:

• Placement Tool
• Locations / Languages
• Site/Category Exclusion
• Ad Scheduling
• Display Campaign Optimizer
• Remarketing

Measure/Track:

• Conversion Tracking
• Campaign Insights
• Analytics
• Website Optimizer

Google Search Engine Optimization

Plan/Create:

• Insights for Search
• Keyword Tool
• Related Searches

Place/Target:

• None

Measure/Track:

• Analytics
• Website Optimizer
• Webmaster Tools

Start your first subscription by adding RSS feed or Atom feed from blogs (e.g. www.gordonchoi.com/feed):

Import OPML to Google Reader

Alternatively, let other Google Reader users share their feed subscriptions with you as OPML. You can add/import OPML files to your Google Reader account. An OPML file has a *.xml extension. Go to:

• Reader Settings
• Import/Export
• Import your subscriptions

When you’re done with adding your feed subscriptions, Google Reader will automatically start checking the subscribed feeds for updates.

Export OPML from Google Reader

Say, you have subscribed to RSS/Atom feeds of all the blogs on SEM Blogs. To share your feed subscriptions with other Google Reader users, export OPML from your Google Reader. In your Google Reader account, go to:

• Reader Settings
• Import/Export
• Export your subscriptions

Switch to Google Reader from Another Feed Reader

If you are switching from another feed reader to Google Reader:

• Export your subscriptions from your old feed reader service as an OPML.
• Import the OPML to Google Reader.

Google Reader Help

Visit and review Google Reader Help to find out more advanced use of Google Reader.

• Web links or URLs with fewer characters provide better usability to users who may want to share, tweet, retweet or email your URLs.
• Google URL shortener provides click reports on the number of clickthroughs your links receive.

Wikipedia defines URL shortening as:

URL shortening is a technique on the World Wide Web in which a URL may be made substantially shorter in length. This involves using an HTTP Redirect on a domain name that is short to link to a Webpage which has a long URL.

Google URL Shortener’s History

Brief history about Google’s URL shortener:

• December 2009: Google made the URL shortener available to Google Toolbar and FeedBurner.
• Between December 2009 and September 2010: The URL shortening feature was integrated to Google News, Blogger, Google Maps, Picasa Web Albums, and Google Moderator.
• September 2010: Google launched the URL shortening tool (goo.gl) to everyone globally.

Google URL shortener’s major objective is to provide stability, security and speed to users.

• Stability: We’ve had near 100% uptime since our initial launch, and we’ve worked behind the scenes to make goo.gl even stabler and more robust.
• Security: We’ve added automatic spam detection based on the same type of filtering technology we use in Gmail.
• Speed: We’ve more than doubled our speed in just over nine months.

Why Using URL Shortener

Matt Cutts explains Google’s URL shortener may benefit SEO as it does 301 redirects to allow you get credit for links that are tweeted.

Google needed a url shortener for its own products where we knew the shortener wouldn’t go away. We also wanted a shortener that we knew would do things the right way (e.g. 301/permanent redirects), and that would be fast, stable, and secure.

Danny Sullivan provides a thorough story through Search Engine Land about different URL shorteners:

• Google’s URL shortener
• bit.ly
• Twitter’s t.co

How to Use Google’s URL Shortener

Use Google’s URL shortener through the web version:

• Go to http://goo.gl/.
• Log on to your Google account.
• Copy and past your long URL on to Google’s URL shortener.
• Click the “Shorten” button.
• Copy the shortened URL and use it for your campaigns on social media sites / microblogging sites (e.g. Twitter, Google Buzz).
• Review your shortened URL’s click statistics.

Google’s URL shortener is unofficially available as Mozilla’s firefox add-on and Google’s Chrome extension:

• Firefox Add-on
• Chrome Extension

Google URL Shortener Example

Long URL: http://www.gordonchoi.com/cat/google-tools

Short URL created through Google URL shortener: http://goo.gl/KiO6c

The Google URL shortner reports will show:

• The number of clicks on the short URL http://goo.gl/KiO6c.
• The total number of clicks on all goo.gl short URLs pointing to the long URL http://www.gordonchoi.com/cat/google-tools.

Other URL Shorteners

Besides Google’s URL shortener, other URL shortening tools are also popular to social media marketing users:

• bit.ly
• tinyurl.com
• ow.ly
• is.gd

• Paid Search / PPC (Google Search Network)
• Paid Search / PPC (Google Content Network)
• Organic Search / SEO (Google Search Engine Optimization)

Plan/Create Google SEO & Adwords PPC

Use Insights for Search, Keyword Tool, Search-based Keyword Tool, Traffic Estimator, Ad Planner, Display Ad Builder, Related Searches, Wonder Wheel, and Adwords Editor to create your search engine marketing plan.

Place/Target Google SEO & Adwords PPC

Use Conversion Optimizer, Bid Simulator, Ad Preview Tool, Placement Tool, Site Exclusion Tool, Location Targeting and Language Targeting Settings, and Ad Scheduling to target to your audience.

Measure/Track Google SEO & Adwords PPC

Use Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics to track your ROI, Website Optimizer to improve conversion rate of your website, and Google Webmaster Tools to find and troubleshoot issues of your website.

Google listed most of the above mentioned tools under the Agency Toolkit page in which you can find the brief introductions of the tools.

Google Blogoscoped’s blog post shows you where to find Google’s Wonder Wheel. The Wonder Wheel appears on Google.cn within the side bar that expands to the left.

For example, my core keyword is “English” (in Chinese) which I have entered into Google’s web search. Google’s Wonder Wheel shows a clickable flash-based image with your core keyword in the center and related keywords around the core keyword.

When I click on one of the related keywords “English Learning” (in Chinese), this keyword gets moved to the center and becomes the new core keyword. It creates a newly connected circle for “English Learning” with new related keywords around this new core keyword.

You can build up your Chinese keyword lists by exploring all the related keywords surrounding the core keywords.

PPC Hero shows you exactly how to use Google’s Wonder Wheel and Related Searches for keyword research.

Your website’s content may only be in one language (e.g. English), but your visitors’ may prefer to read your content in their own mother tongue languages. Translating your website’s content into multiple languages manually can be expensive and complicated. Google Website Translator Gadget supports the automatic translation of your site’s content in 51 languages and is a Javascript/client-based tool that operates within visitors’ browsers.

Google Website Translator Gadget detects the language of your web page and the browser settings of your visitor.

• If your visitors’ language is different from the language of your page, they will be prompted to automatically translate the page into their own language
• If your visitors’ language is the same as the language of your web page, no translation banner will appear

The installation of Google Website Translator Gadget requires only the insertion of the code snippet onto your site’s pages. As long as the code snippet is placed within the BODY section of your site’s pages, you can customize the placement of Google Website Translator Gadget.

http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=swine+flu

Google Insights for Search shows you the search volume of “swine flu” has rose sharply after mid-April:

Some smart PPC marketers have been taking the unusual seasonality as an opportunity to sell swine flu related products or services:

Before launching a seasonal campaign on Google Adwords, you should create your swine flu related keyword lists via some of the SEM keyword research tools by using the following keywords as a research base:

Swine Flu
Swine Flu Mask
Anti-Swine Flu Kit
Swine Flu Protection Kit
H1N1

If you are focusing in the Chinese market, Baidu provides an equivalent tool called Baidu Index in which you can see similar rise of searches for swine flu (zhu-liu-gan in Chinese Pinyin):

Baidu Index also shows you the attention rates of swine flu from both the Baidu users and journalists:

• News Search, Image Search or Product Search as opposed to only Web Search
• Categories
• Metros for the United States

Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. This analysis indicates the likelihood of a random user to search for a particular search term from a certain location at a certain time. Keep in mind that Insights designates a certain threshold of traffic for search terms, so that those with low volume won’t appear.

To illustrate how you can use Insights for Search, let us look at how Walmart did between November and December in the past couple of years. From the graph below, you can see how Walmart’s growth in the past several years as well as when exactly the traffic peaks occurred.

Insights for Search gives you news that were related to Walmart during the period of your choice.

Insights for Search’s Top Searches and Rising Searches are new keyword ideas and also show you:

• Walmart’s major competitors such as Target, Best Buy, Kmart, Sears, and Circuit City
• Walmart’s mostly searched item on Google is Wii
• Google users look for toys on Walmart
• For Black Friday shopping, Google users shop on Walmart

The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100; each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.

Rising searches highlight searches that have experienced significant growth in a given time period, with respect to the preceding time period. So if you’re comparing data for a search term during 2006, the time period serving as the basis of comparison is 2005. Similarly, if you’re comparing searches for that term during May of 2006, the basis of comparison is April of 2006.

You can compare up to five search terms or groupings at one time, with up to 25 search terms in each grouping (use the plus sign to create a grouping). Click + Add search term to add a search term or a grouping; to remove a search term, click the x next to it.

Here’s an example:

pen + pencil + paper (grouping 1)
stapler + tape + notebook + ruler (grouping 2)
eraser + paper clip (grouping 3)

By looking at data from Regional Interest, you can prioritize your focus on your regional geo-targeted Adwords campaigns.

Google Insights for Search also associates Walmart to the categories below:

• Shopping
• Local
• Computers & Electronics
• Games
• Lifestyles
• Entertainment

This tells you the categories and products you should focus on.

Signing into your Google account allows you to download the data to spreadsheets (CSV files) and makes numerical values of graphs, rising searches, and top searches available to you. Also, only after you download the data to CSV files, you will be able to see more than the top 10 searches and rising searches.

Here are other examples on how you can use Google Insights for Search.

Keyword Discovery

Keyword Discovery collects keyword data from over 200 search engines in the world and has the largest keyword database that contains over 36 billion searches. Keyword Discovery also offers language specific keyword databases collected from regional search engines.

To get the keywords, you need to sign up for either Keyword Discovery’s free membership or paid membership. With the free membership, you get the top 10 keywords that are of the highest search volume. With the paid membership, you can choose to get the top 1,000, the top 10,000, or the entire keyword list. Each keyword list is priced differently and all the data is being updated regularly.

Google Keyword Tool

Google provides a free keyword research tool called Google Keyword Tool which shows you search volume keyword data of the previous month, average search volume of the past 12 months, and advertiser competitions.

Google Search-based Keyword Tool

Google search-based keyword tool gives you new keyword suggestions that are:

• Not currently in your Adwords account
• Based on the actual search queries on Google
• Matched to specific web pages of your site

Google Trends

Google Trends allows you to compare up to 5 topics (or keywords) and see how often they have been searched on Google over time, with geographic regions in comparison.

Google Insights for Search

Google Insights for Search allows you compare search volume patterns of (topics or) keywords across specific regions and time frames. It shows you the search terms and rising searches related to the topics you have chosen.

MSN adLab Search Funnels and Demographics Prediction

Find out search sequences of users from Microsoft’s Search Funnels. For instance, it can show you how many people search for BMW and then search for Mercedes Benz, Audi, and other automobiles.

Demographics Prediction predicts age, gender, and other demographic information of users. It is based on online behavior of users such as queries they search online and websites they visit.

• Not currently in your Adwords account
• Based on the actual search queries on Google
• Matched to specific web pages of your site

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.

Signing in using your Adwords account login will allow you to view the full list of keywords customized to your web site.

At the moment, the Search-based Keyword Tool is only available to US and UK Adwords users.

There are a total 3 different experiments available. The other 2 experiments are “Keyword Suggestions” (similar to Yahoo’s search assist) and “Alternate Views for Search Results”. You can only join any one of the 3 experiments at a time, but you can simply disable one experiment and then enable the other one right away.

Hong Kong as one of the major cities of China (in which it was re-acquired from the British in 1997) does not have much details on this version of Google maps. Rather I expect Google to later release the Hong Kong version of maps. It will make more sense, as Hong Kong’s Chinese language has always been in the Traditional fonts while the rest of Mainland China is using the Simplified fonts.

A link has been added to the Google China (Guge) homepage alongside the existing links such as web search, images, and news.

I expect this new Chinese Simplified version of Google maps will become much more popular than its Standard English version, as the majority of Chinese users still prefer using services of their own language.

Search Mash possesses a mix of Google Web Search and Google Image Search as well as some interesting features such as that you can rearrange the order of the search results by dragging and dropping.

This is what it says on the Search Mash site:

SearchMash lets you search the internet in new ways. It is constantly evolving as we come up with ideas and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Check out our features page from time to time to see what has changed, and also to tell us which ones are useful to you.

SearchMash is a website operated by Google Inc.

Information that we collect through SearchMash will only be used to evaluate, research, and analyze the ideas and features offered on the site.

It would be interesting to see how Google grows Search Mash. One possibility is that Google is collecting searcher behaviour data to improve relevancy of search results. The other possibility is that Google will launch a personalized search engine based on the features of Search Mash.