Details and a download link can be found here.

The script is fairly basic, but it might be useful for those interested in a web-based, free alternative to GTrends SE. The PHP script uses a slightly different algorithm (the results might be unexpected…) and requires a Google account. You will need some basic webserver administration/PHP skills to set it up.

Therefore, I just uploaded a new version, which uses a different keyword.

Note that if you already have GTrends SE installed, downloading the new version will not automatically change your ref. keyword (this is by design). You need to change it manually by clicking “Settings” and entering a keyword and searches/day in the “Reference keyword” panel. I recommend you find your own baseline keyphrase, but, if you really don’t have a keyword to use, ask me (I won’t put the keyphrase in public here so that it doesn’t get abused).

My hosting provider is having some technical issues with email, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to use the newsletter to notify people about this change.

Now, lets see how GTrends SE has been improved…

It’s Faster

How about getting more work done in the same time? The main new feature in this release is the “negative treshold” option. In essence, this feature allows you to set a treshold (both for searches and competition) and apply special treatment to keywords that are below that treshold. You can make GTrends SE remove those keyword phrases from the list automatically, or simply not analyze them any further. This frees up resources and can significantly decrease the time required to process a keyword list.

Here’s an example – lets say you set the search treshold to “Less than 10 searches per day” and the action to perform to “Don’t check the keywords any further”. As soon as the tool discovers that a keyword has only 5 searches/day, it will mark the keyword as “Below Treshold” and move on to checking other keyword phrases. It won’t waste time looking up competition data for a keyword that is useless to you.

You can configure this feature in the “Criteria” tab of the “Settings” window. And don’t worry, I’ll post a proper tutorial soon

On a related note, there’s now a “Speed” tab as well, which gives you greater ability to fine-tune speed-related aspects of GTrends SE.

It’s More Reliable

Not to say that it wasn’t reliable before , but the new version has had several bugs fixed. For example, when adding keywords, GTrends SE will now automatically filter out commas and other special characters. This will prevent the application from repeatedly trying (and failing) to process an invalid keyword.

Furthermore, the treshold feature, in conjunction with proper speed settings, should eliminate most of the “Forbidden” errors that some users have been getting. This is because the negative treshold can significantly decrease the number of searches GTrends SE has to do, thus ensuring it doesn’t look as suspicious to Google. I still recommend to keep the Google grace period to 7 or more seconds (though feel free to experiment if you want).

It’s More Customizable

In addition to the new options mentioned above, you can even set the colors that are used to highlight good/not good/below treshold keywords. You can find all appearance-related settings in the “View” tab of the “Settings” window.

Anything else?

By popular request, I’ve added the ability to re-check selected keywords – you can right-click the keyword list and select the aptly named “Recheck keywords” command from the popup menu.

There are probably other things I forgot to mention here, small interface changes, simple fixes and so on. Go and see for yourself

P.S.
Don’t forget to sign up for the newsletter!

I looked around for a solution and made a few minor changes to GTrends SE to make this blocking slightly less likely. I also modified it to show “Forbidden” instead of “Error” when you hit a temporary block, so you know what the problem is. Get the new version.

The solution to these errors is to use a proxy. You can find lists of free proxies on the sites below :

Proxy4Free – I myself am currently using a proxy on this site.
ProxyList “fast proxies” – this site has several lists of proxies; the link goes to the list of “fast” proxies that also shows the uptime. You can use this parameter to determine how reliable a proxy is.

How to use a proxy with GTrends SE.

Another possibility is to install the TOR package (freeware) and use the address 127.0.0.1:8118 as the proxy address. Then you can switch proxies just by clicking the appropriate system tray icon and selecting “New Identity” from the popup menu.

I’d also recommend to increase the Grace period value in the GTrends SE Settings menu.

I implemented two new features that were suggested by users –

Launch new instance
Now you can open more than one GTrends SE window. You can do this using the aptly named “Launch new instance” Start Menu shortcut. Note that as a tradeoff windows opened in this manner will not be able receive keywords from the Keyword Grabber extension.

Here’s a bit of info for the technically inclined – the new shortcut launches gtrends.exe with a /new_instance parameter. GTrends SE also supports another parameter – /add_clipboard – that will cause the tool to attempt to get keywords from the clipboard.

Searches vs Competition ratio display
GTrends SE can calculate and display this ratio in a new column on the main screen. You can enable this feature by checking the “Display ratio” box in the Settings dialog.

The ratio is calculated as Ratio = (Searches ^ 2) / Competition, which is consistent with the original definition of Keyword Effectiveness Index.

I’ve also (finally!) got the upgrade script up and working. If you have already purchased the software, you can now visit the Updates page at any time, enter your email adress and get the download link for the latest version of GTrends emailed to you. Note that this function is still experimental, so let me know if you have any problems with it.