Today Google Insights launched, a tool developed for AdWords advertisers to better understand trends in search terms. You can use this tool to compare the traffic for a keyword or phrase and filter by vertical (Category) and region. This is useful for search marketing professionals both for their efforts in PPC and natural results marketing. In both cases knowing the search volume is one of the most important strategic variables, after all why spend time and money on terms with less traffic than others that you can work or spend on?
In the past, Overture was the most reliable way to get free query volume information from one of the major search engines. But they have discontinued their tool and Google has been releasing more search volume data around their AdWords PPC product and now has several of the most important keyword research tools for your webmaster arsenal.
Read more about it on the AdWords blog.