The Bing Ads Keyword Planner tool has been updated to include several new features.
Much Like Google Adwords has its keyword research tool (found here), so does Bing. The Bing Ads Keyword Planner tool is used to uncover keyword suggestions, competition, traffic, and average bid prices. It’s completely free to use, with the only requirement being that you must have a Bing Ads advertiser account.
So, what kind of new features can you expect to see in the Bing Ads Keyword Planner tool? Microsoft has unveiled four new features, the first of which is competitive benchmarking. This feature allows advertisers to compare ad impression data with the existing data from other competitors. If you want to know how well a particular keyword performs – in terms of ad impression – simply enter it into the new Keyword Planner.
The second enhancement is customizable ad group and keyword bids, which as the name suggests allows advertisers to set different bid prices for ad groups and keywords.
Next on the chopping block is a new input method for keyword suggestions. Rather than relying strictly on relevant keywords to acquire keyword suggestions via the Bing Ads Keyword Planner tool, advertisers can use URLs. In other words, you can enter the URL of your website or a competitor’s website to acquire related keyword suggestions.
And the fourth and final feature added to Bing Ads Keyword Planner tool is a longer date range. Advertisers can now obtain search volume data for up to 24 months, which is twice as long as the previous maximum date range of just 12 months.
“We got a lot of asks about customizing the result by date range instead of the default last 12 months after Keyword Planner was released in September….now it’s available!” said Jessica Cui of Microsoft. “You can now set the time period up to last 24 months to get a more holistic view of the keywords trending year over year. Thus, you can allocate your budget for the coming period by referencing performance history.”
Bing has been working around the clock in an effort to catch up with Google, and it’s doing surprisingly well. Various studies have shown that Bing search volume is gradually increasing, with it holding steady in second place, followed by Yahoo in third. Google remains the undisputed king of search engines, but Microsoft’s Bing platform is slowly but surely gaining momentum on its counterpart.
