We're at SMX West this week, just in time to announce a couple of new tools/features for webmasters around the world.
Remember all those Birds-of-a-feather lunch chats last year? Those tweets you sent me? The surveys we sent out? Well, we've been busy with that feedback working on tools to help you. Today we're announcing our organic keyword research tool and access to your webmaster tools data via an API.
Webmasters have a new choice to perform keyword research
Keyword research tool – this tool allows you to perform keyword research on any phrase you enter. It resides within your WMT account and offers the ability to see query volume data on the phrase you enter, and related phrases, across many different countries and languages. You can easily explore query volumes on keywords by simply clicking on any related keyword. All data within the tool is exportable, and we hold a history of up to 6 months for all phrases. This means you can select a date range covering up to the previous six months to see query volume data for the time period you select. Query data shown in the results within this tool are based on organic query data from Bing and is raw data, not rounded in any way. This tool is found when you login, on the Keyword tab.
Upon login, you see a simple interface with a few options to help you target country and langauge. You can also select "strict" to ensure results are restricted to the exact phrase to word you entered.
Entering a phrase or keyword and clicking the Search button will bring back organic keyword query data for the phrase entered, as well as for related phrases. Here we have selected one filter for the United States, but left the language open, and strict unchecked to see what the keyword ecosystem looks like around our topic, in the US. Not surprisingly, our example of fly fishing, during these winter months, nets us lower query volumes. The graph clearly shows a run-up on query volume coming into the holiday season, and trending lower afterwards.
adCenter CPC data is shown to help you understand associated costs if you choose to buy paid ads on the phrase. Hover over any phrase to see more data appear in a box to the left of the list. We also provide a small graph which details the query trend for the previous 6 months. This graph gives you an idea, at a glance, of query volume fluctuations.
Clicking on any phrase in the list pivots the data around that phrase, and keywords related to that phrase. Clicking on Impressions above the suggested phrases re-sorts the list on impression count, from lowest to highest, or highest to lowest.
You also have the ability to select a date range (top, right corner near the country/language filters). We keep a 6 months running history in this current version of the tool, so select any range within the past 6 months, hit search and see the data you wanted.
One final feature is the History function. This keeps track of your last 25 queries. Clicking the History link gets you a popup window. Simply click on any of the past phrases shown in the list to have the system rerun the report on that phrase, saving you re-entering the data again and making it easy to flip between queries to double check data.
The data we're showing has a planned maximum latency of two weeks. This means that you may see data not appearing if you narrow the window to anything up to the past two current weeks. This latency depends on when you perform the search in relation to when we update the data store. Worst case, we'll be able to show you data that's as recent as 2 weeks ago. Best case, if the timing is right, you'll see data current to within just a few days if your work aligns with our data updates. Sorry gang, but we won't be able to communicate exactly when each data update with happen, and that 2 week window is not carved in stone. While we refresh the data each two weeks, depending on how much data we need to crunch, it could take a day or two for the fresh data to hit the tool for you to see.
An alternate path into the keyword tool can be found here. No matter the path you take to the tool, you'll need to login to your webmaster account aong the way, so have your login handy.
Can I get that data to go, please?
Bing Webmaster Tools API – this feature allows you to easily use your Bing WMT data in other locations. If data is available inside the Bing Webmaster Tools, it’s currently available via the API as well. The main exceptions to this is our messaging and the keyword research data. You will need to either login to your account to use the keyword research tool presently, or set up email alerts to see any messages we post to your account.
To access your Bing Webmaster Tools API, head to the main page when you login. Immediately below the Preferences option in the left hand navigation, you'll see the option to access the API.
The page you land on explains the process for getting the data authorized and flowing. Now you can interact with your data in our tools whever you choose. As noted, if its available to you in the tools today, its accessable via the API, the exceptions being access to the keyword research tool data and messaging. Need a fix of geek-speak to understand exactly what the API is able to provide? Head here to read the support documentation for the webmaster API.
These features are available now, to anyone with a webmaster tools account.