We know that when Yahoo! fully moves over from the old search marketing product (Overture) to the new one (Panama) that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool won't be that useful anymore, but it still will have some valid and useful historical data. But it appears that reports around the web are showing that the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool is currently down.
Also, tools that depend on the Overture tool, are spitting back errors.
Examples include DigitalPoint's tool that is reporting under the "No data for phrase:" under the Overture column. Also, SEO Book's tool returns an error that reads;
Warning: fsockopen() [function.fsockopen]: unable to connect to www.inventory.overture.com:80 in /home/awall19/tools.seobook.com/general/keyword/clsOvertureSuggest.php on line 37
Many of the reports call for it being down for a few hours and then coming back up. But it is now down again. I wonder if Yahoo! will keep supporting this tool in the future.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.
Update: YahooSarah has replied to the threads stating:
Hey there, I wanted to confirm that YSM's public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed.We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year.
If you are an advertiser, I'd suggest using the keyword research tool within our platform (the old or new one).
YahooSarah
