Yahoo, Once King Of Keyword Research Tools, Now Recommends Others (Including Google’s)

Yahoo published their very own Yahoo Style Guide this week. We took a look at the SEO basics section of the style guide and noticed Yahoo has a list of keyword research tools. In that list, Yahoo recommends everyone from their competitor, Google to 3rd party tools from WordTracker and Keyword Discovery.

Many of you probably remember that Yahoo was the king of keyword research tools. Everyone used the Overture keyword tool, which lived at https://inventory.overture.com/. Yahoo, after acquiring Overture, slowly been killing this popular tool and finally laid it to rest two years ago today.

It was a sad day when the tool went offline, it was likely an early sign of Yahoo giving up on search and focusing on other things. And now, the Style Guide just adds more salt to the SEM’s wounds.

I remember SEMs and SEOs virtually crying over the decade and downfall of the Overture Keyword Tool. Again, that tool was the number one source for keyword research for most SEMs back a few years ago – and it died.

So if you are looking for good keyword tools, don’t look at Yahoo. Didn’t they build a new keyword research tool within the Yahoo Search Marketing (YSM) portal? Yes, but don’t forget, YSM is being killed soon also – Bing’s adCenter will replace it completely. So why not commend some of Microsoft’s tools from adLabs? I don’t know. Instead, Yahoo can’t recommends Google, and a bunch of third-party sites and tools.