The following issues have been raised with version 1.2.1 of Keyword Transformer. Note that thes e issues affect both the personal and professional editions of the software.
- It is possible to get to the stage where Keyword Transformer appears to have locked up; it ceases to update the screen, and it is identified by the system as not responding. Under these circumstances, it is normally still working on a long list that you have entered. Somebody used Keyword Transformer to convert an input list of 10,000 phrases into broad match, phrase match and exact match variations, so the output was 30,000 phrases; this worked, although it did take half an hour. If you want to be sure that Keyword Transformer 1.2.1 is still running, please do not cover the program window with any other windows while it’s running.
Technically, this is happening because the current design is single-threaded. It’s quite easy to fix by making the application multi-threaded.
- It is still the case that it takes inordinately longer to process a long list than it does a short list. As reported before, this is due to the duplicate detection code being somewhat inefficient at the present moment in time. Again, it’s relatively easy to solve.
If you find any other issues, please add comments to this post. Thank you.
When adding keywords to the estimator today, Google complained about an invalid character: It was the ‘=’ character. Please add this character to your exclusion list. Maybe you could provide an exclusion list of characters that we could add to.
Thanks,
- Vaughn
When adding keywords to the estimator today, Google complained about an invalid character: It was the ‘=’ character. Please add this character to your exclusion list. Maybe you could provide an exclusion list of characters that we could add to.
Thanks,
- Vaughn
Vaughn, many thanks for your comment.
At present, Keyword Transformer will not attempt to clean up invalid characters; it will only clean up a list that includes square brackets and double quotes surrounding each keyword. However, I shall certainly consider adding removal of invalid characters to the clean-up operations for a future edition.
Could you put together a one page quick view of all the functions?
That way I could have it in front of me as I am setting up my lists.
Thanks
Duh…
I just found the Instruction Manual.
thanks!
To the anonymous poster of comment 4, did you also write comment 5? If so, I guess the instruction manual fulfilled your need.
If not, I don’t understand what you mean by a one-page quick view of all the functions. Could you provide me with a bit more detail, please?
Thanks,
David
Hi David,
Just upgraded to the Pro edition mainly because of the ability to append the keyword to the URL for tracking purposes, using SID, TID, etc.
I have heard though from Chris Carpenter of Google Cash and others, that placing the keyword in the URL like that exposes converting keywords to the merchant and affiliate network, who may be unscrupulous enough to use the KW’s to bid against me.
To overcome this problem, is it possible to add a random number assignment to keywords in Keyword Transformer, or perhaps include the ability to generate an ordered number sequence for a list of keywords? In this way I could still track conversions, but the number corresponding to the keyword would only be known to me.
Please consider this as a feature request, as I think it would be very useful to many people.
Hi Jesse,
I can certainly implement this feature for you. However, you need to be aware that it will not completely solve the problem, and I can explain exactly why this is the case.
If a merchant uses a customer action logging service such as Google Analytics, they can track which keywords have been used to access their site because the referrer field will usually show the previous page used to access the site. If they have set the service up to do so, they can also track their conversions, and they can tie the two together. This means that they can track exactly where their conversions have come from. Even a small merchant such as myself does this. However, it does require a certain amount of technical knowledge to have your site set up in this way.
However, it may make it harder for some merchants to find out which keywords convert, especially if they are not using such a service as I describe, so I agree that it may be useful in limited circumstances.
I cannot promise a date when I can add this feature as unfortunately I am busy at present, but this blog will maintain a record that you have asked for the feature and I will try and add it as soon as I can.
Best regards,
David
Hi David. Thanks for much for considering my request for some type of numbering sequence feature to Keyword Transformer.
Yes, I agree, tracking code such as Google Analytics and so forth is a great way to track customer action and sales conversions. But it works (if I understand it right) only if you have a site to put the code on. With affiliate marketing – which is the bulk of what I do – I’m concerned about which keywords lead to sales conversions. I don’t have access to the merchants site where I can place the tracking code on a checkout page or thank you page, and most affiliate merchants are unwilling or unable to do that for their affiliate marketers.
That’s why I upgraded to KT Pro, because of the ability to add the keywords to the URL which helps track conversions. This works great for affiliate networks like Commission Junction, but not so great for networks like Clickbank which has an eight character limit. In the case of Clickbank or others with these kinds of limitations, for any keyword phrase longer than 8 characters, this feature doesn’t work so well.
Also, appending the KW to the URL exposes the converting KW’s to the merchant and the network, who may be able to use these keywords to bid against me in PPC ads.
That’s why I think adding a numbering feature would be so advantageous. Each number could essentially be a “code” known only to me that would represent an individual keyword. This would solve a couple of problems:
1. Enable me to get around character limitations such as with Clickbank;
2. Prevent merchants or others from “stealing” keywords (in the URL) that could be used to bid against me in their own PPC campaigns.
Once again thanks for considering this feature request. I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m trying to rush you – because I’m not – but the sooner you can add this, the better. I’m currently appending a lot of “numerical tracking code” manually to each keyword so I can track my sales conversions. It works, but it is very tedious and time-consuming.
Best Regards,
Jesse
Hi Jesse,
You’ve put forward a compelling case for addition of encrypted codes to Keyword Transformer Professional Edition, and I will add it when I have time to do so.
Please bear with me; for the time being, I have two other jobs that I must deal with, and I am also getting married in about a month, so it will take me some time before I can implement this feature. I’ll do it as soon as I can.
Best regards,
David.
Hi Dave,
I just bought and installed v 1.2.1.
Unfortunately I’m getting the hour glass and ‘Not Responding’ error when running about a 200 line keyword list which outputs to about 895 lines.
I’ve restarted and tried about 4 times shortening the list but every time it runs for over a half hour without finishing, I have to close out.
How do I resolve this issue?
Thanks,
Brendan
Dave – I’m ok now, I was using keyword permutations + duplicated characters + swapped characters + broad, exact and phrase.
So I had a lot going on and the output was huge. I cut back.
Thanks
Thanks for your comment. Keyword Transformer can often appear to lock up if you ask it to do too many things at the same time. If you have a request that might turn out large, the best approach is usually to start off with few options enabled, and expand them as you go.