[andrenotgiant]

Anyone complaining about how the tool got worse is not using it to improve their AdWords Paid Search campaigns, they are using it to scrape out keyword demand data for SEO.

Don't try and lump this in with legitimate Google complaints.

[JDDunn9]

Why do you think paid search campaigns don't need more detailed data? Why do you seem to think SEOs shouldn't get data?

[krelian]

>Why do you seem to think SEOs shouldn't get data?

Because they pollute the real results. If you write your content for search engines and not for users then it's bad content.

[JDDunn9]

You've been drinking the Google kool-aid. Google has always been the primary financier of web spam on the Internet. They knowingly profit from Adsense on spam sites. If they wanted to, they could end web-spam over night by banning Adsense accounts for spamming.

SEO is just another form of marketing. It is no more/less legitimate than PPC campaigns. In fact, PPC ads are far worse because Google does little to police them. As long as Google makes money, they don't care if you scam users. That's why they paid half a billion dollars in a settlement to the FTC for knowingly selling illegal pharmaceutical ads.

[elorant]

Like it is that simple. There are millions of adsense accounts. You can't hand pick everyone. Penguin 2.0 was supposed to hurt spam sites and judging by the fuss it created in Blackhat SEO sites it succeeded a lot.

[JDDunn9]

They hand pick spam sites and remove them every day... There is an entire department dedicated to detecting spam.

[ozi]

They're pretty tough on spam, actually; far more strict than any other network I've dealt with.

[JDDunn9]

They will manually remove sites for spam in their own search engine, but they don't ban the associated Adsense account. In other words, they are more than happy to pay you to spam other search engines.

[ozi]

One of my AdSense accounts was just banned (testing cloaked traffic to made-for-adsense sites), so I beg to differ.

[babuskov]

Couldn't agree more. I run a small website and was ranked within first 10 results for some keywords in the past, because my content is very relevant to the niche and I did a lot of research to write it.

In the recent year or so, I have been pushed to 30+ place and top 10 results are completely useless junk websites that contain all the SEO and keywords, but really, really shallow information. I guess someone used Mechanic Turk or Fiverr to get someone to write about it for $5 and then slapped all the possible SEO stuff and now ranks well and earns money from AdSense.

Or maybe I was just punished because my website does not have AdSense on it...? I hope not.

[andrenotgiant]

Not that it will help, but Matt Cutts posted a request for people in your situation just yesterday: https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/372801217727979520

[ZanderEarth32]

Well in theory the keyword tool reflects what users search for .