One of the original Google Labs projects, Google Sets, was discontinued and later integrated as a feature in Google Spreadsheets. TechCrunch recently reported the re-discovery and found it to be useful as a way to list types of beer. Hacker News points to its potential use as a market research tool.

Google Sets are essentially automatically generated lists of related keywords pulled from Google’s massive search index. They allow us a look into how keywords are related as seen through the eyes of the collective Internet. That means these are top-tier searches that are likely popular and highly desirable keywords and keyword phrases.

BuzzFeed clarified that Google Sets is no longer using real-time data and quotes a Google Spokesperson as saying “It is a snapshot of words and concepts that are connected to each other on the web.”

Google Sets are still in use by Google to generate related search suggestions and are now available for use by public on Google Spreadsheets.

[Header Image via Flickr]

Make Your Own Sets

To generate your own sets of keywords, simply open up your Google Drive and create a new spreadsheet. Enter two or three related keywords, highlight them and hold Control (or Option for Mac users) while dragging your selection down as far as you like.

Google Sets for Domain Research

I can imagine using Google Sets as an available domain name research tool, similar to how many use Google AdWords for domain research, but Google Sets would be faster.

You could fill in Column A with a root keyword, Column B with your Google Sets list and Column C with “.com” or your desired domain extension. Copy the whole selection and paste it into a bulk domain lookup tool to find available keyword domain names.

From this quick example, “FindGourmetFood.com” was found to be available as of the time of this posting. The possibilities and combinations you can input are endless. You could also reverse the columns and use a Google Set as a pre-fix for an existing keyword.

Let us know if you give it a try for domain research or find any interesting sets you’d like to share.