Great news for all you keyword buffs. Remember the good old days when Yahoo used to show us the search totals for the previous month? Yahoo stopped sharing those numbers with us in January 2007 for some reason (and their popularity began waining at the same time – coincidence?)

Well for some reason (to make more money somehow). Google is now sharing those numbers with us! The always secretive Google has opened their massive vault of data and is willing to put numbers (still approximates but numbers!) on the search results in their keyword tool.  The Google Keyword Tool tells you approximately how many times people searched Google for your keyword terms.

This is huge for a number of reasons. First of all, Google is letting us see behind the curtain and is giving us actual data. Google is infamous for being vague and protective of their data. Maybe they’re trying to maintain their “good guy” reputation which is being challenged as they increase their death grip on the internet. They don’t want to become “the Microsoft” of the internet and have people hating them for being successful.

Allowing us to see actual data will help everyone who relies on keywords to create content for the internet. Instead of basing our keyword research on estimates from search tools like Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery, we can get the real numbers directly from Google for free. Take a look at this snapshot of a search I did this morning.