Overture Keyword Tool not responding

[offender]

Hi,

I came to use the overture keyword tool this morning (http://inventory.overture.com/) and I have seen it times out on me.

Is anyone else seeing this as well? Has this been planned maintenance by overture or is it something more serious?

If you can share any information on this I would appreciate it.

[Sztraik]

Hi,

I saw the same, but now it seems to be back to normal.

Bye

[offender]

Right ok thanks for this, I am from the UK on Eclipse broadband. What country and broadband are you using to get this working now?

Has anyone else been having similar problems, perhaps my IP is banned.

[limitup]

FYI this tool is no longer going to be supported and I wouldn't be surprised if one day soon it just disappears. Ya'll better start getting used to WordTracker. :)

[Sztraik]

It's not working again.
I guess that the tool should still be available for the countries where Panama hasn't been launched yet (I'm also in Europe). I think it's just a technical problem.

[anallawalla]

Still down from Australia.

[offender]

Good news everyone!

I have just spoken to Yahoo directly and they say their US tech team is currently working on this and they hope to get it back live soon (maybe even today!)

They also stated that there are no plans as well to take this down long term!

Good news all around!

[zeus]

Its wierd that this post is here now, be cause that has not been working for hmm a year maybe, sometimes it works, but most you get a 404.

[nichebot]

Offender,

Just curious as to who exactly over at Yahoo you spoke to about the tool.

I'm not sure how possible the event you speak of might be due to this Ode to the Yahoo Inventory tool...

[dmnews.com...]

Best,

Jim Morris <snip>

[edited by: werty at 2:49 am (utc) on Jan. 31, 2007]
[edit reason] Removed Signature - see tos #13 [/edit]

[YahooSarah]

Hey there,

I wanted to confirm that YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.

We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year.

If you are an advertiser, I'd suggest using the keyword research tool within our platform (the old or new one).

YahooSarah

[Edwin]

Why not install the same captcha protection as is already in place for the search engine bids tool? I bet that would help a lot to reduce non-human traffic to the keyword tool for what I'm guessing is a very quick, simple fix...

[p5gal5]

Hate to break it to you guys, but this tool is always down - even in the US. I usually have to refresh the page 10-20 times in order to get a functional try at it.

My best advice is to log into your account - this seems to get priority and I have not had any problems doing keyword research from within an account.

[jcoronella]

>> captcha protection

Or just put ads on it, and beef it up!

Man, the number of advertisers (YSM customers) using it on a daily basis must be rediculous. Especially webmasters who use Adwords but very little YSM (like me).

[Tom_Dalton]

Do they realize that taking it down, even for a short time, will force all the 'heavy' users to go to another service? Then when Yahoo magically brings the tool back with an API (and presumably a price structure) they'll have a much harder fight to migrate people back.

I have a hard time seeing how this is a wise move on their part.

[jcoronella]

>> will force all the 'heavy' users to go to another service

You mean the bots?

[jcoronella]

Yahoo, you have EVERYONE's attention, now give us something good!

I would even pay, or have a minimum spend.

Google, this would be a great time to jump in and steal their thunder with something even more useful. [/gauntlet]

[Tom_Dalton]

And I'm not sure I entirely buy YahooSarah's implication that nothing has changed with the tool but the volume of use it sees... Something has definitely happened on the back end to seriously decrease access to it. I haven't been able to get in once, for days.

[Tom_Dalton]

>> will force all the 'heavy' users to go to another service

>> You mean the bots?

Sure. Let's include them -- companies that are willing to pay to develop bots are probably willing to pay for legitimate access to the data. Yahoo's losing that opportunity as well.

I was referring to the folks searching for 'inventory.overture.com' who are seeing the top-bidded ads for KeywordDiscovery and other tools today.

[Marcia]

We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year.

Does that mean it'll only be available to API partners, and not for one else?

[Drag_Racer]

I got into it today and noticed all the search terms were rearranged and put each term per line in alphabetical order regardless of what was actually searched for. Doesn't this completely make it worthless or at least down to a logical guess?

How long has it been this way. I have not been there for a couple of years.

[TravelSite]

I think you must be looking at something else - I'm not seeing any change to the overture system (whether doing it on the sign up page or via the direct link).

[Drag_Racer]

test search for 'drag racing' resulted in

33157 drag racing
6124 drag game racing
2710 car drag racing sale
2641 drag nhra racing
2600 drag racing video
2478 drag game online racing
1910 drag racing v3
1661 drag online racing
1502 drag free game online racing
1357 drag free game racing
1317 car drag racing
1065 drag nostalgia racing
919 drag motorcycle racing
605 drag ihra racing
604 drag ihra nhra racing
591 drag photo racing
574 boat drag racing
556 drag picture racing
etc...

as you can see everything is alphabetized...

[TravelSite]

ahh... I'm with you now. I missed that ordering - I thought Yahoo was was slowly moving to a completely random ordering! Duh!

Not all the results I've seen however are in this a-z format yet.

E.g. "manchester" in the UK search still gives results such as "manchester airport parking" (this could be the most popular word combination ... or simply the first combination appearing in the Yahoo database).

For us personally, it would be more useful if each word combination was listed seperately, though its still a great tool.

[centime]

Actually, it looks more like the list is arranged by number of searches, but seeing as all the names are similar, their is a mild appearance of alphabetic arrange ment

Great tool

[TravelSite]

Just to clarify, the list is being ordered in descending order of popularity as usual. But the actual word order within each individual phrase has being ordered aphabetically (in the list above).

e.g. D(rag) F(ree) G(ame) O(nline) R(acing)

[GabGirl]

The listing are still ordered by search volume. Possibly the alphabetical ordering of the actual term is is to make sure some where along the line there is a halfway bright human involved in the process.

A person will convert those terms into a more natural language and optimize the page for "Drag Car Racing" instead of "Car Drag Racing"

[kapow]

I used to use this tool a LOT, but gave up when they started lumping things together and messing with the order of the words. Successful keyword investment is in the detail, they screwed the detail - I dumped that tool.

There really is a BIG market for any search engine that provides a genuinely helpful keyword research tool for webmasters. Are you listening Yahoo, Google, MSN..? ZZZzzzz z z... I thought not, you're just planning how you can dupe Webmasters into buying the expensive keywords, so we've moved on.

...but we'll come back if you show signs of being helpful :)

[restless]

The problem with the search engines providing a Really good keyword research tool is that if YOU can find out what keywords are the most popular then so can EVERYONE else. Then you'll have a lot of competition for your niche and every other niche.

Analyze your logs and find out what keywords are coming to your site and do your keyword research from there, those that are willing to put in the work will be rewarded.

[fischermx]

Analyze your logs and find out what keywords are coming to your site and do your keyword research from there, those that are willing to put in the work will be rewarded.

I often see this advise and I really don't understand.

The reason of this tool is to know keywords for which you don't rank, but may rank.
So, looking for those who you are already being found is a bit useless.

[newarrior]

from [forums.#*$!.com...]

YahooSarah
Grunt Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 32


Hey there,

I wanted to confirm that YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.

We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year.

YahooSarah