Keywords Everywhere browser add-on to become a paid tool in October

The popular keyword research browser extension has announced it will become a paid tool from 1 October 2019, after being free to use for the past four years.

Keywords Everywhere - the Chrome and Firefox extension that automatically surfaces keyword data on browsers - has announced that they will move from a free to a paid model next month.

In a blog post, they said that the move to a paid model is due to the amount of bot activity on their API over the past year which has severely impacted the tool:

"Unfortunately, a year ago we started noticing bot activity where automated scripts were querying our API to get data for keywords. The number of calls made by bots soon far surpassed the number of calls made by real users, and for a year have been forcing us to constantly upgrade hardware in order to keep the software functional for our real users.

"We have had to disable certain functionality like the Import Keywords & Analyze Page features. We have tried everything to mitigate bot activity such as blocking accounts, blocking IP addresses and IP ranges among other approaches. For a small set of users we tested implementing Google Recaptcha (and other recaptcha solutions), but this did not work well at all.

"We spend a lot of time managing servers and issues because of the bot activity. The bots are always a few steps ahead and end up creating thousands of API keys and there is no way for us to control API usage. By making Keywords Everywhere a paid tool, all bot activity will cease immediately."

Rather than forcing users into a monthly subscription, Keywords Everywhere has opted for a pay-as-you-go model, with $1 buying 10,000 credits for keyword data. With one credit basically giving you search volume data for one keyword. Based on their user data, Keywords Everywhere estimate that most of their users will be charged just $2 per month.

From 1 October, the Keywords Everywhere Chrome extension and Firefox add-on will stop working automatically. Users will still see the "related keywords" and "people also ask for" keywords widgets when they search on Google, but to see the search volume, CPC and competition data metrics users will have to purchase credits for their account.

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