New UK-based keyword research tool for the world’s second largest search engine

To compliment the recent UK advent of YouTube’s Promoted Videos, Google have now made available a keyword suggestion tool for the world’s ’second largest’ search engine.

YouTube Promoted Videos have been released in the States for about a year now but it’s only been since October 2009 that Google have allowed UK-based Search Marketers to drive traffic to videos on YouTube directly from the Adwords interface. Today, Google released the UK version of the YouTube keyword suggestion tool.

This tool will be undoubtedly be of value to search marketers in helping provide understanding of the behaviour of users on YouTube. This tool will make it possible to identify and quantify (usual caveats apply about Google’s stated search volumes – namely, take with a large pinch of salt) the opportunity in different areas – and develop a strategy to capitalise on available traffic volumes. For instance, the new keyword tool will help you answer the question who has the most popular music video – Britney, Jacko, Shakira or ‘that woman off X Factor’ (Susan Boyle). As the results below illustrate, even in death, the King of Pop’s popularity seems to outstrip that of his rivals by between 2 and 4 to 1!

Click the images to view clearly in  new windows…

But, before we all get too excited by this, a word of caution for search marketers…

Context.

Do not forget the importance of context. While this looks and feels like the Adwords keyword tool – the YouTube keyword tool is providing insights into very different user behaviour to the insights provided by Google’s regular keyword suggestion tool. Yes, this new tools is a window on users who are making searches, but on YouTube users are searching in a different mode, exhibiting different search behaviours and have different expectations to those they have when searching for a product or service on the regular Google interface. The implication here is clear – to harness the power of YouTube, you need a different strategy, and not to mention, medium, than that used for your other Adwords campaigns.

This point is illustrated well, if we compare the example results provided by the YouTube keyword suggestion tool to that of the regular Adwords’ keyword tool. For the query, I’ve used Google’s own suggestion, “Green Tea”.

YouTube results:

Adwords results:

The results are, as you might expect, totally different.

YouTube’s keyword suggestions are dominated by artists such as “Green Day” and “Al Green”, while the Adwords’ tool shows the popularity of generic “green tea” phrases and keywords related to green tea’s dietary and nutritional virtues.  There is a clear distinction between the directly informational searches found when querying Google’s primary interface and the entertainment skew of those searches found on YouTube.  In fact, on the YouTube keyword tool there is actually zero search volume on the suggested ‘green tea’ search phrase.

These variations highlight the differences in behaviours exhibited by users on YouTube and Google and underline the need for bespoke approaches to make the most of each property’s distribution opportunity.  Failure to take into account and adapt to these differences is is likely to lead to, well, failure…