Google's keywords tool is now available without any adwords account. (not sure if it was before, but I seem to remember not) https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal They've also added estimated volume (in numbers) as opposed to just that bar thing and estimated clicks per day. On top of that, they seem to care about google trends a little more and you can now lookup sites as opposed to just keywords. I can't say much about the accuracy, but I'm suspicious. I think it's fair to assume that Google could make these tools as accurate as they want. There are no overwhelming reasons why they shouldn't, just a few small ones, a tendency towards secrecy and a general feeling that disclosure might lead to spam. Such reasoning is inevitably watered down by the existence of other tools & IMHO, common sense. There might be financial gains from disclosure as Adwords matures and growth gets harder to find. EG allowing advertisers react to short term trends (something I think that current tools do not allow) and present data to their one-ups (clients, managers etc.) as authoritative. I'd like to know what people think. I know there are some Trellian people on this forum. I'd like to know what they think too. Is google finally going to be providing keyword research tools sufficiently useful and accurate that professionals will use them?
The Google keyword tool has been public as an external tool for a while now. It's not very accurate though. You'll notice that the keyword search volume gets rounded off to even numbers. Once you start making a spreadsheet based on this data, you will notice that a lot have the same volume numbers. Of course, out of anybody Google should have the most keyword search data. So it may still be more accurate than any other keyword tool.