The fact that Yahoo have ceased to update their Overture keyword suggestion tool has been known for several months. Overture US was last updated in January 07 and the UK data was last refreshed in May 07 and Yahoo have officially commented on their termination of support for the tool.

This morning however, it seems that the tool has become completely defunct as no terms return any search results. Does this mean the tool is officially dead ? Either way this throws a serious issue for the little guys who relied on the fact the Overture tool was free.

So what now ?

With Wordtracker now using UK data there is now a solid alternative at a cost. £15 per week / £29 per month / £149 per year. Having now used this tool with the UK data (I wouldn’t have recommended it to the UK market prior) I can say it is a sound investment and the billing structure makes it accessible to both big and small whether you want to cram all your keyword research into a single week or have the tool on hand all the time.

That being said, I for one would like to see the Overture tool reborn as it provided another angle to compare with Wordtracker and the more thorough you can be with your research, the better the results.