Keyword Discovery is an analytical keyword tool offered by Trellian Software (headquartered in Melbourne, Australia) a company that has been a part of the Internet scene since at least 1997.

The corporation also offers a number of other tools for online entrepreneurs: a comprehensive suite of SEO tools, PPC bid management software, a tool to provide “competitive intelligence” in your market niche, and a submit tool with guaranteed placement (available search engines are limited to AltaVista, AllTheWeb, Fast, HotBot, ScrubTheWeb, Slider, whatUseek, and Yahoo!® Search Submit).

Keyword Discovery was quite recently revised and enhanced, and additional new features are hinted at in the company’s informative forum section. Their database of keywords stands at results from 32 billion searches over the 12 months. Over 180 search engines have their data incorporated into the database (including Google and Yahoo!), although the index is only updated once each month.

Keyword Discovery offers the usual and expected keyword-analysis-related functions, such as reporting on how often certain keywords are searched for, providing suggested related keywords for your business, adding misspellings, and checking out industry trends. By entering in a potential keyword or phrase, the tool will return information on how many web pages use the same word(s).

The Keyword Effectiveness Indicator processes information from the tool on both the number of searches for a particular keyword or phrase and the number of competing sites that use that same word/phrase, and come up with a rating from 0 to 10 indicating the effectiveness of the word/phrase in question.

The Keyword Density Analysis tool provides a measure of how often a website’s keywords are found on a specific web page. The tool can also cross-reference keywords taken from other URLs to show you related keywords that you may not yet be targeting and also makes it easy for you to then add any additional keywords to your campaign that you discover.

Keyword Discovery is unique in offering a seasonal search trend report, which can help you see which keywords performed best for certain selling times, such as the holiday season, Valentine’s Day, etc. Some users have commented that the seasonal data is sometimes counter-intuitive and speculate about potential gaps in the database that need to be attended to.

The tool also offer a useful keyword translation function if you are marketing your products/services outside of North America. Also useful is the “related” function, which may uncover keywords with a regional or cultural meaning that fit your business model, but which you were unaware of.