Google grew over the years while providing a bunch of free resources that we have always been thankful for. Gmail, Google Drive, Youtube…. And more. They have always been appreciated for the services. But recently, they made some important announcements regarding one of their services - The Google Keyword Planner, which was invaluable for search engine marketers. 

The Change

Its full functionality won’t be accessible to inactive users and those users that don’t meet the minimum spend requirement. Yes there is a minimum spend requirement now to use the Keyword Planner. All they will see will be sets of range of numbers instead of specific values. 

For instance, let’s just assume a particular keyword has an average monthly search of 950. If the advertiser’s monthly spend is below the minimum requirement, he/she will see a range of data instead, like 100-1k. That could be any value between these numbers. This doesn’t help at all.

Keyword Planner Monetized?

Google’s new experiment will have low spenders work hard to access search volume data. So what exactly is the spend limit then? Google hasn’t revealed that bit so far.

Here’s a post on advertisercommunity.com forums by CassieH, a Google employee.

"[There are no] specific spend requirements or data limit amounts that I can share, and there are no changes planned at this time."

Reportedly, there should be months of continuous activity in an adwords campaign to gain more specific keyword results. 

Monetizing the keyword planner would drive users into using Adwords, and marketers, in turn, will have to pay for it.

The Forecast feature

For mostly inactive or low spending users, Google recommends using the forecast feature – a tool to see monthly projections of impressions, clicks and cost. However, search engine optimization efforts won’t be benefiting from this as they won’t be getting much on organic search data. 

As of now, free monthly search data for all users is history. But if you are willing to pay to continue your marketing efforts, you can get full access to the Keyword Planner.