Heyo! The hits just keep coming from Google lately! The Google Wonder Wheel has made a triumphant return with a new name and format.
What is the Google Wonder Wheel, you might ask. Please excuse me, you must be new. The Google Wonder Wheel was an amazing tool. Remember when you were in elementary school, and your English teacher taught you how to brainstorm ideas for stories you were forced to write?
My dissertation on puppies got a B+, by the way. Well, the Google Wonder Wheel was just like that. Pay Per Click managers and SEO’s around the world used this tool to find ways to branch off of a topic in search of new keyword ideas and niche markets.
Typing in a key phrase would bring up multiple related key phrases that got significant search traffic. Clicking on one of those related terms would bring you to a new brainstorm of terms related to THAT term. It was quite a beauty. But for some unknown reason, Google decided to take it away and put all us PPC managers in timeout.
- I’m sorry for doing keyword research… JEEZ MOM
Its been nearly a year now with lame keyword tools from third party vendors, and in the meantime Google has made small changes to the way it allows advertisers to research. We now have the option to research ad group ideas that come pre-populated with keywords (ooh, fancy) for those of us too lazy to build a campaign ourselves. But now, we have the Contextual Targeting Tool!
Now, in some ways this tool is not quite as good. Like visually. It stinks. Just another list to add to the dozens of other lists Google offers me. Where did my awesome brainstorm go? Bring it back, along with Liz Frank pink pony binders and scrunchies, please. But that being said, in some ways its better. It combines the Wonder Wheel ability to find related terms with the Ad Group tool’s ability to scrunch related keywords into one slick little group, and on top of that, it throws in a bit from the Traffic Estimator tool by giving you bid estimates. Oh, Google. You shouldn’t have. My birthday was a month ago!
Think of the Contextual Targeting Tool as the dashboard that pulls together all your favorite bits and pieces of Google’s tool arsenal into one place. I really don’t know why they didn’t think of this sooner. I mean really, Google, lets get the ball rolling. And if you could create a tool that writes a perfectly optimized text ad for me while you are at it, that would be great. kthnx!