AOL released data on the 20 million searches 650,000 searchers did over a 3 month period earlier this year. The data contains a goldmine of information at 20 million keywords. This data, while seasonal and limited only to AOL data, potentially links data to specific AOL users. In the case of Thelma Arnold, a 62-year old widow who lives in Lilburn, GA, a NY Times reporter used the search information to follow the trail leading to her. This presented privacy issues leading AOL to pull the search information made publicly earlier.

While it is no longer available directly from AOL, you can still obtain them from these AOL search data mirrors.

Since then, web tools were created to sort and search this data.

At aolsearchdatabase.com, you can search the data by:

  • User ID
  • Keywords
  • Search Date
  • URL

    • Another tool at askthebrain.com/aol, lets you search the data by:

  • Top Level Domain
  • Keywords leading to each domain

    • By default, the tool displays the top sites URLs, number of referrals to that URL, keywords leading to that URL, and the keyword diversity ratio.

    The last tool, dontdelete.com, lets you search the data by:

  • Keyword
  • Keyword stem
  • Partial keyword to find related keywords

    • You can also view keywords leading to a specific URL.

    Great keyword research data for the search engine marketer.

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