The keyword research browser add-on “Keywords Everywhere” will no longer be free, the developer has announced. As of October 1, 2019, it will become a pay-as-you-go model.
If you’re not familiar with Keywords Everywhere, this is a popular keyword research tool, an extension that is available for Chrome and Firefox, which is used for ranking websites and generating traffic. You may have been using Keywords Everywhere to evaluate your competition, cost per click, for search volume, and alternative keywords.
Pay-as-you-go
Now the new model will cost $1 for 10,000 credits of keyword data. “Every time you see the volume for one keyword, credit is used up,” Kevin, the operator of Keywords Everywhere is quoted as saying, and he goes on to explain: “For a Google search where you see 20 related keywords and 50 people also ask for keywords, 1 (main query) + 20+50 = 71 credits will be used up.”
According to the announcement, this should end up costing users less than $2 a month.
Increase in bot activity
Apparently the move to a paid model was caused by an increase in bot activity. Kevin claims they were deluged by bots and were forced to disable the Import Keywords and Analyze Page features, in addition, to constantly upgrading hardware to keep the software “functional for our real users.”
According to the Keywords Everywhere website, users will stop seeing the volume data for all keywords and will need to start purchasing credits.
A million users
Keywords Everywhere were created in 2015 and for the past four years, free software has been enjoyed by more than a million users. The developers claim because of the assault on the software by bots, they were forced to make it a pay-as-you-go service but wanted to keep the price point as low as possible. “The only other option would have been to shut it down,” they claim.
Funds put to good use!
With the funds, the developers hope to add support for other countries and build additional features.
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