If it’s one thing (almost) all marketers agree on nowadays, it’d be that the advent of Keyword Planner was the worst thing since Google Reader’s demise.

Ever since Google replaced its good ol’ Keyword Tool with Keyword Planner, a combination of Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator, we have been getting more and more nostalgic as we criticize this move.

Sure, we have good enough reasons – Keyword Planner no longer has free access (which means we must sign in to our Adwords account to use it). It doesn’t give broad/phrase match type data for search volume anymore. Local search trends data is now possible only through export. Plus, there’s no search share. No device targeting. No local vs. global monthly searches. No option to filter by closely related search terms.

But today we want to make a case that Google Keyword Planner isn’t all bad. That it does “make it easier to plan search campaigns”, as Google puts it. (Those who rather want to find out the best alternatives to Keyword Planner can skip to the end.)

What You Can Do with Keyword Planner

Keyword Planner lets you target not just countries but also regions within a country, unlike its predecessor.

For example, you can see keyword volume and competition in a specific region (say Indore, Madhya Pradesh) in India. This feature helps you do better (and faster) local SEO.

Additionally, you can:

• Perform comprehensive competitive analysis
• Download stats and traffic estimations in one data
• Create ad campaigns much faster and easily
• Integrate all your keywords in adgroups, getting just those keywords
• Find out relevant ideas to write about
• Find out as many words as you want and not just 100 (this is the benefit of being logged in)
• Retrieve traffic estimations

All in all, Keyword Planner provides a good user experience and opens some new doors for marketers to leverage and do better marketing.

10 Alternatives to Keyword Planner

• SEMrush
• WordStream
• Bing Keyword Research
• Ubersuggest
• Moz Keyword Difficulty Tool
• WordTracker
• Don’t Hit Enter
• Mergewords
• SEO Book Keyword Tool
• Keyword Eye

What’re your thoughts on Keyword Planner? Do you think it’s a bad move or are you rather enjoying it? Tell us below.