When you try to optimize your web site for the search engines, one of the most important tasks is to make sure that you know what kind of search queries people out there actually use when searching for the kind of goods, services or info your site provides.

Google recently updated its public keyword research tool by adding what seems to be pretty exact numbers for how many people used a particular keyword phrase during the last month.

Anyone trying to sell search engine marketing services, would probably be interested to know that in July 2008 this was how many people search for:

search engine marketing: 246,000
search engine optimization with a z:673,000
search engine optimisation with an s:22,200

(This tells us that the public at large still hasn’t totally absorbed the new broader concept of “search engine marketing” and anyone trying to sell such services must keep that in mind.)

Google also provides the average numbers for the last 12 months.

This tool may also be used by people interested in social trends. “Obama” got 1,220,000 searches in July, “McCain” 450,000. These are not votes, mind you!

Surprisingly, Yahoo! had decided to kill its own Overture keyword research tool at the same time as Google improves its service. What were they thinking?

Another great keyword analysis tool that we recommend is Wordtracker. You may try it out for free.