Find Alternatives - Worthless Since Database Purge

no good now for generating additional terms or for negative term ideas

[justshelley]

Has anyone else noticed that the "find alternatives" feature isn't hardly worth using now? I noticed the change right after Google did the database purge that disabled all those terms that supposedly had never had an impression.

It just doesn't make sense anymore because I can add terms now that I know are good terms that should come up with a lot of variations and with find alternatives, I'll get "no results" or a bunch of worthless junk words that are no help at all.

I used to use this feature to help me generate my negative terms too but I can't do that either because the results seem to be meaningless now.

Google...if you are listening...I really MISS the functionality of "find alternatives". Please fix it back the way it was.

[cyhcto]

justshelley -

Refer below to the thread regarding the "Keyword Tool" being down - reports are that when it's down, so is the "find alternatives" - perhaps a little investigation that way may provide a clue. In my experience Google's been more than happy to provide you with any keywords they can, should the tools that determine them operate correctly.

[justshelley]

I've been very happy with Google's keyword tools until a little over a week ago. I don't use the keyword sandbox...prefer "find alternatives" because then it's more like a brainstorming session when I use it because it gives me ideas for word combinations as well as for possible negative terms.

I could see how there could be a link between the find alternatives and the keyword tool...theoretically, they should pull similar searches.