As I am sure anyone in the SEO game is familiar with the Google AdWords Keywords Tool that shows the popularity of various search terms. What you may not be aware of is the cheeky actions Google is doing for people arriving at the keyword tool from Bing.
So here is the normal actions for when you arrive at the Keyword Tool from the Google SERPS and search for “Broad Match” information
Then when you select the “Exact Match” (aka, useful information) you get to see the data that can be acted upon
Now when you try and repeat the above process when entering the keyword tool from Bing’s SERPs you get an all together different result.
Then when arriving at the tool, everything seems normal to begin with when the default match type is set to “Broad” (aka, worthless data).
Now the interesting part comes when selecting to view all of the information on the “Exact Match” type
Yes that’s right, Google is doing a cheeky redirect to users who are arriving at the keyword tool form Bing. Google is forcing Bing users to sign up with Google AdWords to view the same information that is publicly available when arriving at the tool from the Google SERPs.
Is this right for Google to be doing this? Who knows. But they are and I am sure they will have some metrics which show how effective this has been. Maybe Bing should remove this URL from their SERPs in response to this? Seems crazy how Bing would be showing results for their competitors advertising platform, when instead they could promote their own better.
Michael Cropper