Google released the updated version AdWords Keyword and Placement tools in beta:

* Keyword Tool combines the functionality of Keyword & Search-based Keyword Tool to get you keyword ideas based on keywords you enter, your website content, and user searches. Also let you search by any combination of a keyword, website/URL, or category – instead of having to perform each of these searches separately. Additionally, you’ll be able to see all match types for a keyword at the same time to help you compare statistics for each match type.
* Placement Tool now search for placements by any combination of keyword, website/URL, or category. For e.g., you can search for placements that’re only on youtube.com, in video placements, in automotive category. Under Advanced Options, you can also further filter placements by Country or Language, Impressions Per Day, Included Ad Sizes (those sizes offered by the content publisher for their offered placements), and demographic options.

Google has offered us a keyword tool for years that has made great improvements periodically.  This particular tool seems to weed out the unnecessary fluff that we never wanted in the first place such as all the extraneous long tail keywords.

It’s main difference is that instead of taking your suggested words, Google will now go look at your website and provide suggested keywords based on its content.

Some of the newest features are:

1. A magnifying glass icon takes you straight to Google Insights for that term.

2. Ad/Search Share tells you how your ad is showing up for that search term

3. We can filter the results by search volume, competition and suggested bid.

I am disappointed that the search volume numbers are apparently from the broad match search volume – not nearly as useful as the existing keyword tool that allows you to change that to exact match for more accuracy.  I also feel that I get a much larger and comprehensive list when I use the Google Keyword Tool.  However, if we are looking for a single term or set of terms, this tool lets us narrow things down quite a bit and may help uncover some valuable new keywords.