Google just did affiliate marketers a HUGE favor! It’s one that they once claimed they would never do, but now it’s done.

I found out when I did a keyword search using Google’s External Keyword Tool and noticed that the keyword result was no longer a rating of 1-5. Now it’s returning results that show search numbers!

That’s right, instead of just showing you those “green bars” – which only gave you an idea of relative search volume – you now get to see search numbers based on Google’s database.

Whatever your reason to search keywords – AdWords PPC, SEO, article marketing, blog marketing – getting real Google search counts for those keywords is a very welcome development.

In fact, the only people who probably don’t think this is great news are the people who have developed fee-based keyword search tools. Because now, at long last, we can get up-to-the-minute search volume information from Google itself, and for free.

Most of the comments I’ve seen say “it’s about time!” Many of us often wondered about the purpose of Google’s keyword tool, since it didn’t actually show real numbers. Yes, it was useful for knowing whether a given search term would get a little or a lot of traffic, especially when compared to related search terms.

But now that Google is showing search counts, their Keyword Tool has jumped way ahead of any other free tool – and may even mean you can do without a paid tool, if all you do is very basic keyword research.

And now you don’t have to guess about the amount of Google traffic in a market or niche. You’ll be able to base your marketing decisions on approximate numbers.

According to this Google Blog post, “Now, when you use the Keyword Tool to search for relevant keywords to include in your keyword list, you’ll be able to see the approximate number of search queries matching your keywords that were performed on Google and the search network.”

You can check it out yourself here.

This is great news. Thanks Google – and it’s about time !