I have received a lot of emails from newsletters I subscribe to, informing me of the great change. One of the senders was excited enough to conclude: "it probably spells the end for services like Wordtracker." A famous guru could not hide his joy: "Holy cow! Talk about shaking up the planet!"

Jim Morris, who is undoubtedly a keyword research authority and the founder of Nichbot.com, celebrated the breaking news on his blog: "All of a sudden - there is no longer any confusion about how many times people are searching for a certain keyword phrase on Google.com."

Jim Morris also published a screenshot of the 8 first results he got when he searched for keywords suggestions for "blogging" on AdWords Keyword Tool. The keywords are: blogging, blogs, blog, blogging software, radio blog, pink is the new blog, blog search, bad girls blog; then it shows 3 columns: Advertiser Competition, Approx Search Volume for last month, and Approx Average Search Volume.

Until July 2008, all three columns used to show a shaded bar, which was supposed to indicate the relative volumes, i.e. if the bar was completely green it supposedly indicated very high volume; half green equaled moderate volume etc. But now, the two search volume columns show actual numerical figures, while the first column, Advertiser Competition, still shows this shaded bar.

One of the keyword suggestions Jim Morris got was "radio blog." The Competition bar next to this keyword is 3/4 green, representing what looks like quite a lot of competition, right? I strongly suggest you search google.com for "radio blog." You'll be surprised to discover there is not even one ad! (Well, perhaps by now there are a couple). Neither when you use broad search nor when you use phrase; neither in the United States nor in Canada or the UK.

The same thing happened when I tried "bad girls blog." The shaded bar is painted half green, perhaps indicating moderate competition (As you can see, it is hard to know what it actually indicates. The question is: why doesn't Google reveal the real number of bidders on each keyword? Why is it a secret in the first place?) At any event, you expect some competition when the bar is half green, don't you? But again, there is not even one ad for "bad girls blog" in all the English speaking countries.

It wouldn't be so bad if Google were just a search engine. But Google charges millions of people billions of dollars for AdWords, and a smart advertiser has to rely on the data that Google gives them to make intelligent decisions regarding his/her advertising campaign. If these data are extremely inaccurate, there is a good chance that most advertisers who use AdWords are pouring a fortune into Google's pockets to no avail.