Forum Moderators: open
I never liked the company's attitude to service. That was ever since there was a problem, I couldn't use my account for over a week, and after several emails back and forth - and me demanding some compensation - they offered me a free extension of my subscription. Imagine my surprise when the extension turned out to be all of 48 hours! Yes, I'm UK based and am used to the rubbish service standards the UK expects compared with what others in the US are used to. But I seem to have no end of trouble with their service with search being painfully slow (for which they lay the blame elsewhere). If you use Wordtracker regularly you must surely have run into the same problems.
Anyway, there's inventory.overture.com, Google Sets, Google Adwords' tools, related search, various websites with mashup facilities all free for keyword searchers, D*g*talPoint tools, free software like goodkeywords and, apparently, lots, lots more [google.co.uk].
KEI? Surely you can make your own? Please tell me what am I missing if I don't renew my subscription to Wordtracker?
Anybody else?
However, there are times when I want to do some intense research and save large lists of keywords and also get statistics on the number of pages (i.e. competition) and evaluate KEI. That is when I use my subscription.
Also, do you find that you often can't do those simple tasks because WT is painfully slows or just times out?
They say, "Please bear in mind that the Overture search tool has become increasingly unreliable since mid 2006. This may be due to the new Panama system. We are investigating."
1. If it's "increasingly unreliable" then do we trust in its availability less and less? Or in its results?
2. They've been "investigating" since mid 2006. If it's taken over a year it sounds like a stalling tactic. At what point do we as customers throw the towel in and say that they've had enough time to "investigate" (especially when there are good other tools around)?
Note to mod: I'm not leading up to "disclosing" a fantastic competitor product ;)
I've tried most of the free tools, but I pretty much stick to Google and Wordtracker for my keyword stats. I wish Google gave more than just a 1-5 ranking, though.
I stopped using Overture's keyword suggestion tool a few years ago, though I will sometimes check it when I see conflicting results between Google and Wordtracker. I also use Digital Point's tool now and then, which shows Wordtracker and Overture side-by-side.
KEI is certainly easy enough to calculate, as long as you have a tool that can gather the stats for you.
To evaluate competition, I use two metrics:
1) Number of pages matching the "exact" phrase (as in the KEI formula)
[google.com...]
2) Number of pages with the phrase in the title. For example:
[google.com...]
I don't know of any program that gathers the 2nd metric, though.
The one thing I don't like about Wordtracker is the limitation of keywords to 300 even in a paid version
I would suggest that Wordtracker, offer past paid members a one month trial to see what they are missing today.
I would glady sign up as a paying customer, if it added more value than the free tool.
