I’ve always thought of the Keyword Planner like a super eager intern. They bring you all kinds of stuff it worked really hard on for you, but it’s just not as useful to you as they were hoping it would be. Sure, I kept going back for the nuggets of useful information available, but I always wanted more.
Well, that little intern just graduated and is ready to do more in-depth work for you! Google has updated the Keyword Planner with new features, and they are preeeeetty, pretty, pretty good. Here’s a break-down of what’s new for you to go play with:
1) Time Selection & Comparison
This works just like the time selection and comparisons in the AdWords interface by showing you how metrics looked during certain dates and how they changed compared to the time period you want to compare to. I’m super psyched about this feature, because there are a lot of times I want to show a client how search volume has changed for keywords, but it’s so burdensome to use Google Trends for more than one keyword. Check out how cool it looks:
This would be great to show a client that there were more searches for Mother’s Day this year than last year. It also displays keyword ideas below this and how they’ve changed over time. That lets you pick the rockstar keywords on the rise this year by looking at the “total change”. You can look at the “total change” on the keyword or suggested ad group level. Again, this just helps you pick out clear winners for your account based on performance either during a seasonal period that’s important to you or just compared to historical performance. You don’t want to pick terms that are going out of style!
2) Device Performance
You can now select to see how keywords are trending on mobile versus “desktablet” and breakdown by each individual device. Check it out: 
This is great, because I can see not only how new keywords would perform on mobile, I can see their seasonality and how they’ve been doing historically. Maybe a keyword is on the decline on desktop and tablet, but on the rise on mobile. Knowing this could give you the strategic edge over your competitors!
3) Location targeting
In the same area you can play with device stuff, you can play with locations. You could always specify a location, but now you can compare them like this:
This is an awesome tool if you’re doing any geotargeting stuff. For instance, here, I can see people in New York love their mothers more than people in Los Angeles. Seriously, though, if you were doing market research for a new product, this would be a great way to see where search volume exists already.
4) Bid adjustment previews
Once you add stuff into your plan, you can see what adjusting the device and location bids will do to the keywords in your plan
Here’s what the device bid adjustment previews look like:
This is a super valuable tool to anyone building out campaigns that will not have mobile turned totally off.
The location bid adjust does the same thing by showing you your targeted locations and letting you preview what the bid adjustments would do.
If you pick a bigger location target, like the whole United States, you can see different options for breaking down location bid adjustments.
Prevent yourself from spending gobs and gobs of money trying to figure out the best bid adjustments, and preview that stuff RIGHT HERE. Also a neat thing to show the client, as it proves your strategy and ability to plan down to the last detail is on point!
5) Better filtering
Check out this sweet filtering box. You can specify how closely you’d like the keywords to relate, highlight the keywords already in your account, and decide whether or not you’d like to see adult themed ideas. I’m especially excited about the first two, since they’ll save me lots of time.
I think I got all of them, but really—you need to go play with this stuff for yourself! Google totally stepped up the Keyword Planner’s game today, and you all better go get the most advantage from it that you can, right away, before all your competitors figure it out!
