Yahoo Says Overture Keyword Tool Not Dead Yet

There have been reports around the Internet today about Yahoo Search Marketing canceling the Overture Keyword Selector Tool, which has been a staple of Keyword planning and search marketing for almost a decade.

Feeling that part of the search marketing world, and the tools dependent upon it, had been buried; I addressed concerns with the Yahoo Search Marketing Team & John Slade, Sr. Director, Global Product Management with Yahoo Search Marketing and found out that such is not the case.

John’s response:

First, I’d like to clarify that Yahoo! Search Marketing’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 sheer 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.

Q: Are there any plans of offering a new YSM tool or API?

Yahoo does 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.

Q: Why was this not announced beforehand (or was it?)?

Since the public tool is still available, there isn’t anything to formally announce. However, when we launched our new advertising platform last quarter, it featured an improved keyword research tool (which we refer to as “protected” since it’s only accessible to advertisers who are logged into our system) to help advertisers discover more relevant and valuable keywords that fit their individual needs. We’ve been getting really positive feedback about this tool and we plan to continue to enhance this tool as we learn how advertisers interact with it.

Q: Is Yahoo hosting this tool somewhere else now?

As I mentioned before, the public tool continues to be available but my advice to our advertisers is to use the protected keyword research tool.

So it seems the Overture Keyword Selection Tool is not dead, it’s only on the fritz and hopefully Yahoo will get it back up and running again. I’m sure many in the Search Marketing industry will be happy to hear the news.

Is the Overture Keyword Selection Tool working for you? Please feel free to leave a comment below.

Written By:
PG

Loren Baker | Search Engine Journal | @lorenbaker

Loren Baker is the founding editor/creator of Search Engine Journal and remains an advisor and Editor In Chief to this publication.

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Comments

  1. It’s down for me:

    $ telnet inventory.overture.com 80
    Trying 66.35.238.14…
    telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Attempt to connect timed out without establishing a connection

    It’s been unreliable for awhile, though, so my tool uses KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker, as well.

  2. Cavan Moon says:

    It’s been down for me for a while now. I looked into this last week but didn’t get much from Yahoo’s customer service. Thanks for providing this update. Overture, KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker all have their problems, but until recently, I’ve been satisfied with Overture. Hopefully this is fixed soon.

  3. John Mann says:

    The “regular” Overture keyword research tool is down for me.

    Does anyone know how to access the protected keyword research tool mentioned in this article?

  4. Birdie says:

    It has been down for a while, but I wish they would not replace it with the fake stats they have been working on, the one I read about had only graphs not numbers so it would not be as effective for what I do.

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  6. izle says:

    Great informations

    Thanks

  7. kraloyun says:

    Very nice article

    I recommended this article

    Thanks

  8. smartzul says:

    Overture is my fisrt tools when I’m doing keyword research.. It help me.. ;) But, I also use the another tools..

  9. very good news

    I use this tools

    thanks

  10. There are now free versions of Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery available which also helps.

    Find more Keyword research tools and tools for competitive intelligence.

    Hope that helps.

  11. andrey says:

    super thanks

  12. derrich says:

    Great article, Loren. And I found your suggestions to be helpful as well, Carsten. Thanks.

  13. SEO Religion says:

    Hmmmm I’m not much concerned with this. Usually high traffic will put this site down right away.

    But what I want up and running again is the YSM keyword bidding tool where you can see all bid prices.

    It was good for PPC budget estimate proposals. But I guess they really need to take it out every since they implemented the landing page quality score.

  14. Local Search says:

    It is 2-10-08 and it seems like the overture keyword tools is still down. I guess I will have to find another alternative for my local online marketing business. Right now I have been using Wordtracker does any one else have any suggestions on other keyword search tools?

  15. Xianhong says:

    I still can not open the site, i have no problem to open it last month, but i can not open it now. hope it will works soon.

  16. Antonio says:

    Shame its a great tool.!

  17. Dave says:

    Where is your keyword selector tool? This web page is really old stuff.

  18. Overture Keyword Tool has redirect now :(

  19. praveen says:

    Hmm, I tried to find the yahoo overture keyword suggestion tool but i am getting the yahoo marketing but there is absent of the overture.

  20. Mich says:

    When Overture is work?

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  23. Juliet says:

    Very good to know…digital point used to have a great keyword tool that scraped overture’s data, but hasn’t produced good results lately

  24. There are many keyword research tools found and can be used like : wordtracker and google keyword tool, I prefer to use one of these tools