Google’s new tool for SEO/SEM spying

From the desk of Roy Furr, Wednesday, 2:24 pm

Just got notice today of a new tool from Google. It’s designed to help you identify keywords you can use to generate new SEM traffic, that you’re not taking advantage yet. But there’s another (almost secret) use this tool has.

Spying.

You see, you can enter any website into the tool and see the 100 most-commonly searched for terms that match pages on that website. You don’t have to be the website owner to do this. So you can search on your own sites. Or a competitor’s.

I think you can see the value in this.

The tool is called Google Search-Based Keyword Tool and is available at: http://www.google.com/sktool/

The ability to search on other peoples’ sites or sites you don’t have AdWords accounts linking to may be removed, if Google gets wind this is being used to gain competitive intelligence (none of the promotion materials indicate that this is what the tool is for). So use it now while it’s available.

And let me know what you think.

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