UPDATE ~ Keyword Country Version 5 has just been released. More details at the bottom of this page.

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Software Type: Desktop Software (Windows)
Cost: $75.00 per month.

Keyword Country is an interesting service that has taken a very serious approach to maximizing your profits from AdSense. There are quite a few keyword lists that claim to give you the highest paying AdSense keywords. Many of these tend to top out at about 100,000 keywords, don’t provide much of an interface to search on and become stale very quickly. Keyword Country has gone the extra metaphorical mile and has a huge list that is 60 times bigger than many other guys’ with over 6.52 million keywords and growing. Quite a feat! They say they are constantly expanding.

I was very impressed with what I found. Let me show you.

My Experience

Keyword Country works as a hybrid piece of software that requires a desktop application that interfaces with an online database. This means that the database can be kept up to date without intervention from the user, which is a clear advantage over traditional keyword list offerings.

I downloaded my software and installed it. Once I had finished installing the software, I opened it up and logged in with the username and password I was given. The early versions of the Keyword Country software were pretty garish. The latest release is a real improvement and provides a professional looking tab based interface to allow multiple searches simultaneously.

I found there were primarily two conceptual ways I could use this software. One way suits a direct approach (via a search based method), while the other way suits an exploratory approach (via a expandable directory structure).

First, I took the direct approach and performed a search on my research keyword phrase "fly fishing". While the number of keywords it returned was a little fewer than I was hoping for, I was impressed with the data attached to each keyword phrase. For each of the 152 keywords it returned it also gave me the following information:

• Max Cost Per Click
• Clicks Per Month
• Competitors
• Traffic
• Sponsors
• Average PPC (Which is great to see the depth of the keyword phrase in question)
• R/S Ratio
• Keyword Phrase Rating

This is exactly the kind of data that is useful for really drilling down into profitable sub-niches, especially the average PPC function. This average price is important because it demonstrates the depth of the keyword. It highlights if there are lots of people willing to pay a high price for their ad to be shown, or if there are just a few people. The average price is a more realistic measure of what the keyword is really worth to an AdSense publisher.

One other aspect that particularly impressed me was the system provided me alternative keyword suggestions. These were highly relevant and targeted. I could just click on one of these suggestions and it would load that search in a new tab. I love software that enables you to laterally research. All of these columns were able to be sorted by any of those measures.

In addition to this method of searching, there are also two other search based options. I could also search based on price, as well as search based on specific criteria with the advanced search feature.

The price based search is awesome if you wish to brainstorm for new niches you can profit with. You just set the two prices you wish the keywords to be within, and the software will mine these out of its huge database.

Just for fun, I asked the software to return me phrases that attracted a cost between $50 and $100 for a single click. My goodness! Would you believe me if I told you that there were well over 500 keywords in the Keyword Country database that cost more than 50 bucks a click. Amazing.

The other new feature that Keyword Country has added since my initial review is an advanced search feature. This allows you to find keyword phrases that meet any values you set to the following characteristics:

• Keyword Contains This
• Keyword Doesn’t Contain This
• Cost Per Click Range
• Competing Pages Range
• Number of Sponsors Range
• Traffic Volume Range
• Number of Clicks Per Month
• Average CPC Range

You can then sort your data by any of those values. This is a powerful component of the software and allows you to very specifically research new niches.

As I mentioned earlier, the other way you can use Keyword Country is by browsing it in a similar style to DMOZ. This was a really fun and amazingly powerful exercise. In the same way as I can browse any directory site I could browse through Keyword Country and scout for opportunities without having to explicitly know what I was looking for.

This is excellent for brainstorming and researching at the same time. Earlier versions of the software I tried didn’t have these complete, however the latest version was well equipped in this area.

I was able to instantly see price and competition data as I surfed through the directory structure. Apparently they are now more than 600,000 high paying and niche keywords available for this feature. While it is not perfect (sometimes leads to dead ends) this is the best Adsense brainstorming method I have found in any software I have used. Powerful stuff!

While I really love Keyword Country and it is still my favorite tool for Adsense research, it is not perfect and you need to know that. They are constantly developing the software and at times the database becomes non-responsive. This seems to be happening less, but you may still have to bear with it at times.

It would also be beneficial to be able to submit your own keywords for the database to expand on and include. This is also an excellent feature Keyword Burner and Adsense Dominator have that Keyword Country would be wise to include, I believe.

Keyword Country is aimed at AdSense publishers primarily and they don’t claim to cater specifically for other groups. However, I think even if you are not an AdSense publisher, you can get a lot of value out of this software by leveraging some of the extra intelligence about keywords that Keyword Country provides.

For example, you can see as a PPC advertiser what keywords are inexpensive, and would consequently be good to advertise on. As a Niche Miner you would be able to use the data to tap into profitable niches (high clicks with low prices or high prices with few advertisers).

However, if your aim is to make money from Adsense, then I believe it would be a smart move to subscribe to Keyword Country to find out exactly how much money you are leaving on the table. They offer a free preview and single day trials if you need to prove it to yourself without risk.

Summary

So what did I end up with after using Keyword Country?

• Hundreds of relevant keywords with very relevant data to help determine keyword potential.
  

Strong Aspects

The strong points of this product:

• 6.52 million of the highest paying keywords.
• Great advanced search.
• Excellent brainstorming tools.
• Lots of highly useful data for each keyword that goes beyond any other tool of its type on the market.
  

Weak Aspects

The weak points of this product:

• No ability to add keywords to the database.
• Sometimes database stalls out.

Who is it ideal for?

This is aimed at people who publish AdSense on their websites and I highly recommend it for these folks. Using this tool, they can know how to modify their content so their site shows more profitable ads. It would also suit PPC advertisers looking for low priced keywords.

Ratings

For Niche Miners:
For Search Engine Optimizers:
For Pay Per Click Advertisers:
For AdSense Publishers:
Usability:
Value:

Site: Check Out Keyword Country Now!

## UPDATE ##   |  by Craig Cahill  |  21 April, 2008

Jay reviewed Keyword Country V4, and Version 5 Beta is now available. It looks like there are some powerful new features, tools, plugins and some really impressive numbers - like a database of premium keywords in excess of 14 million. The new MSN adCenter plugin especially will be a welcome addition to please users.

It's the same look and feel Keyword Country with all the improvements found under the bonnet:

Live Search is one of the biggest new features. It allows you to search for keywords from Google Sandbox, Yahoo and Ask Search Suggestions, and Overture Inventory. So instead of relying solely on Keyword Country's database, you can now cross-check against some of the biggest databases available. This brings extra keywords and niches to your research, and should allow you to line your pockets with more profits.

Semantic Keyword Finding is an SEO research tool that uses Google and other search engines to find "naturally related keywords". By using the keyword theme of your website, "word relationships" are established and keywords are suggested to increase your page ranking.

Update Stats can bring outdated keyword lists back to life by refreshing their values to reflect the latest keyword data. It's a simple process too - you simply import or paste your old keywords and Update stats will gather their latest price, competition and search data. What a great idea this is - work you've already done (and probably been paid for) can be updated instantly and you can re-charged and/or reuse it full of confidence about its worth.

Yahoo & MSN Competitor data is often overlooked. But we must remember that Google is not the only search engine in the world wide web. There are actually many keywords that optimize as more profitable for Yahoo & MSN than for Google. Keyword Country 5 gives you a peek inside these engines and provides thorough competitor data.

Artificial intelligence is an advanced filtering system that removes junk, duplicate and low value keywords and delivers keywords groups ready for immediate use. After all, we shouldn't have to spend more time sifting through junk than we do finding our gold in research data. So effective filtering can bring things back to balance.

Multiple Language Support allows you to dig keywords in 14 different languages including French, German, Italian. It goes above and beyond just digging them multi-linguistically; KW5 also intelligently groups and filter them as well.

The 24/7 customer service I can personally vouch for. I had some questions that were answered in minutes through the Live chat program - if only all software provides went this extra mile to satisfy their paying customers.

The PPC Plugins allow you to Create PPC campaigns with a single right click.

Still Coming:

Extra plugins are about to released like keyword Geographical Data, and competitor monitoring for Adwords and SEO. In my emails with Keyword Country they also mentioned "many new exciting plugins that are in development". They couldn't comment on the specifics yet but they assured me they are not far away from release.

Check back for a full review of Keyword Country Version 5 sometime soon. In the mean time, you can find Version 5 details at the Keyword Country website.