I said earlier in Keyword Research Tools - Part I that Google doesn’t make search data publicly available which strictly speaking is true. However, it does have its own keyword suggestion tool that is part of Google’s Adwords PPC program. To access Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool you can go to https://adwords.google.com/select/tools.html Alternatively go to Google's Free Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal But you’ll soon discover that whilst it will suggest keyword alternatives or other possibilities, it gives you no data for competing web pages. If you want to access Overtures keyword suggestion tool directly you can go to: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ It will give you the searches conducted on Overture in the past month on any keyword or phrase you query, provided that phrase was used. But again notice there are no results for how many competing web pages are using these keyword phrases. To find out how many competing pages there are for your keyword or phrase you would have to go to each search engine, type in the phrase and then see how many reported results there are. If you have even a short list of keywords this could take you days and with a large list take you weeks.
A check for web hosting provider using Google.com gave 10.2 million results, 90.6 million on Yahoo and 184 on Hotbot (a minor search engine) A check for web hosting service provider gave 65.4 million on Google, 36.3 million on Yahoo and 21,600 on Hotbot. Here’s another important thing to note - the level of competition you face for almost any keyword or phrase varies between search engines as the above examples show. One tool that I have found invaluable that provides keyword suggestions, search results and competing web pages is Ad Word Analyzer. It also provides the number of PPC ads on Overtures PPC network and on Google Adwords. This can also be a good indicator of how important keyword phrases are by the number of Ads appearing for them. Ad Word Analyzer is PC based software and whilst not free, the last time I checked it was being sold for $77. This in my view is a small price to pay for the amount of time and effort this software can save you when doing keyword research. Jeff Alderson, the developer, continues to provide excellent support for this product in keeping it up to date and I have been using it for a couple of years. The surprising thing is that Jeff did not create this software for keyword research but for research on PPC on Google and Overture. So if you’re doing or thinking about PPC it’s an excellent tool for that too. You can learn more about Ad Word Analyzer at : Ad Word Analyzer If you have chosen some keyword phrases that you want to rank highly for with a search engine, you should ask yourself the following questions: Do people use the phrase you have chosen when doing a search ? How many searches are being reported on your keyword phrase ? Can you find keyword phrases to use that are better than those you are using now ?
Think very carefully about your answer to Q1 - Get it wrong and you're wasting your time doing any SEO. | 
