Google Adwords Keyword Planner - maximum page views issue

As a Website Designer who specializes in SEO (search engine optimization), I do a lot of keyword research for my website design clients in order to optimize their website and content for SEO. I use Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool as it's great for getting related keyword ideas and statistics for what people are actually searching for. However, in the past year, Google has stopped displaying the exact number of searches for keywords in it's Keyword Planner results unless you have an active Google AdWords account (meaning: you are spending money), and if you're not, it will give you this message: "You've reached the maximum number of page views for this day. This page now shows ranges for search volumes. For a more detailed view, check back in 24 hours. Dismiss"

And in the results, AdWords Keyword Planner displays a limited data view – for example, I would see values like 0, 1-100, 100-1K, 1K-10K, 10K-100K, 100K-1M, 1M+ in the average monthly searches column rather than the exact number of searches. Disappointing!

There is a Google AdWords Spending Minimum for getting all the stats from Keyword Planner tool: The minimum spending is $1 per month. I called and talked with Google AdWords support (1.866.246.6453), because I DO have an active AdWords account, though I do have a very low daily budget setup (50 cents a day). The tech said he wasn't sure why I was getting this error, even when I hadn't used the tool yet for the day. So they escalated it to higher support and called me back a day later, and explained that it was because my AdWords account had not yet spent $1 during the last period, so that was why I was getting the error – not because I had hit my maximum number of page views. This was because my budget was so low that my ads hadn't been viewed and clicked recently, which resulted in me no longer seeing the actual numbers. The minimum AdWords spending is $1 per month in order to see the exact Keyword Planner tool data stats.

Below is what Google says about this new limited data from this page:

Advertisers with lower monthly spend may see a limited data view in the Keyword Planner. For example, you may see values such as 0, 1-100, 100-1K, 1K-10K, 10K-100K, 100K-1M, 1M+ in the average monthly searches column. In addition, other advertisers may trigger the limited data view by reaching a limit on the number of searches for search volume data.

Anyway, Google is now basically charging us to see the information it is collecting from us. Money is, sadly, king. There are FREE SEO tools that also display exact data, such as the Chrome Extension, Keywords Everywhere. This tool isn't as great as Google AdWords Keyword Planner in that it doesn't give ideas, it just gives you the exact numbers of any given keyword phrase. So, I use Google AdWords to get ideas, then put them into Keywords Everywhere tool to get the exact numbers (though these numbers are not always an exact match to Google's stats, they are at least in the ballpark).

Anyway, that's my take on this – wanted to share what I learned! Happy Keyword Researching to you! Need a SEO Expert? If you need SEO Consultant, I'm happy to discuss your business website needs and help you get found!