Tame the Google AdWords Keyword Planner for your search trends

The appearance of Google's Keyword Planner tool heralds the imminent demise of the widely used Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Although this new tool seems more focused on creating AdWords advertising campaigns (logical, since it is a merger between Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator), it is still possible to use it in the same way as before to analyze search trends, except for a few details.

Update (August 28, 2013) : The Keyword Tool is now a thing of the past! A few changes have been made to Keyword Planner since this post was written. The most important is that the “Search for keyword and ad group ideas” option now offers keyword suggestions, similar to what was in Keyword Tool .

How to get there

Go to the Tools and Analysis tab , where the Keyword Tool was.

Select the “ Enter or upload keywords to see how they perform ” option.

After choosing your keywords and targeting (except language, this is now done in the next step), click on “  Get search volume  ”.

From the “Ad group ideas” tab, switch to “  Keyword ideas ”.

So!

What's changed (for search trends)

• There is no longer a distinction made between trends by device. Desktop computers, tablets and mobile phones are now combined. The volumes will therefore be higher at first glance, but this is only an appearance.
• There is no longer a global trend ( Global searches ), the “avg. montly searches” only reflects the targeted geographic area .
• It is now possible to use provinces , cities and groupings of these as geographic targeting.
• Search volumes are now shown by default for exact match keywords .
• Several languages ​​can be chosen simultaneously. The results, however, remain divided under different tabs .

Are you ready?

When announcing the Keyword Planner on May 20, Google mentioned that the Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator tools would be retired approximately 60 days later. This brings us to the date of July 18 (approximately). Until then, I suggest you start taming this new tool!

Do you see any other features replacing those of the Keyword Tool that are useful for search trends?