In our profession (search engine optimisation specifically) we spend a lot of time researching the keywords that people are typing into the search engines. One of our main tools for doing this is Google’s Keyword Tool – especially as Google has approximately 90% of the UK search market. In recent weeks, Google has been rolling out a new version of the keyword tool, with a redefined interface.
This is fair enough, I’m always in favour of technological advancement! One of the key things that changed as part of this redesign was the loss of the dropdown box that allowed users to show or hide columns of data. Things like the average cost per click, the search trends, etc. This was replaced by a piece of text saying that you could ‘Sign in with your AdWords login information to see the full set of ideas for this search’.
This was slightly annoying, but not the end of the world, and we just got on with it (the ‘old’ interface is still available and we are able to use it). However, in recent days we’ve started to notice that after a period of time using the new interface, Google automatically re-direct you to their ‘Sign Up for Adwords’ page – even when you are in the middle of doing keyword research. This is really, really annoying! Of course, if you do sign in to your Adwords account or go ahead and create a new Adwords account then the automatic re-directs stop – but talk about a hard sell!
I thought Google’s core brand thought was ‘Don’t Be Evil’ – I don’t think this fits very well! Obviously, the $1.96 Billion net profit figure quoted for the first quarter of 2010 wasn’t enough ….