What do you really need to know about Google having exposed it’s numbers of search occurences, instead of those green graphics that would just give you a very rough estimate of how often a search term was looked for?

Well, many people have written about this, but two blog posts really stand out: Jerry west wrote “Google Updates their Keyword Tool” and Jim Morris wrote “The Initial Assessment of Google Unveiling Approximate Search Counts In Google External Keyword Tool”. (Haha, Jim, you crack me up with your beancounter language - but that’s exactly what makes you such a good fit as a keyword expert!).

I would say both of these posts are mandatory reading. So read them. Now.

If you want to start a PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign one of the first things to do is to check out how many advertisers are bidding on that search term. The fastest way to do that is to just search for that phrase in google.

Some keywords have almost a hundred advertisers - just type in “affiliate marketing” and see how many ads show up (per page there is an 8 ad maximum, but then the ads show up on other pages too).

Other keywords might have only two advertisers - when I typed in “pencil” there were just two results showing up.

Guess which campaign will be easier to compete in? Usually everything below 15 ads per searchphrase is an easy game, and every searchphrase that has more than 50 ads will be a tough one.

But again: this is just a rule of thumb, and some search-terms will be just too hard to monetize even if you are the only one. The key to higher profits is as always: testing, testing, testing.