The Overture search inventory tool is one of the great little secrets of the internet. For those who have not discovered it, you can find out who is searching for what around your topic and use the information to drive your paid search choices.

We have been reviewing a particularly sulphurous quantity of consumer-generated feedback on behalf of a company which has incurred the wrath of consumers, and trying (on their behalf) to figure out what advice we should give them about managing the situation. The volume of complaints made us think it was worth looking at traffic on Overture, which captures Yahoo! searches. Fortunately it hasn’t quite got to that pitch yet.

But, intriguingly, several other companies figure in the context of the term “complaint”. Here they are in order of the most complaints. We have linked to the page you reach if you follow the link.

1=. eLoan complaint 1=. Vonage complaint 3. Walmart complaint 4. Yahoo complaint 5. Herbalife complaint 6. Cingular complaint 7. Pay Pal complaint 8. Bank of America complaint 9. eBay complaint 10. McDonald’s complaint

There are some observations one should make about this list. Big companies are more likely to figure on it than small ones. Yahoo! is going to be there, because it is Yahoo!’s website. Tech companies are more likely to figure than non tech companies. The two tech companies eBay and Yahoo! have even thought about this search and ensured that they have pages with information for customers there. eLoan complaint appears to be such a popular term that it is spammed, judging from the search results page. Pay Pal, despite being part of eBay, seem less well prepared and their number one result is Pay Pal warning which is a forum for people with cautionary tales of dealing with the company.

Vonage, Wal-mart, Cingular, Herbalife, Bank of America and McDonald’s would be well-advised to think about this search in the context of their web presence and provide customised landing pages answering the issues that consumers and journalists may wish to raise.

The Overture results on the word “complaint” point again to the undoubted lesson that if you are in customer service the search engines (Yahoo! in this case) are doing the job for you.