In the last two articles, we’ve been talking about keyword research and how it can provide valuable data into the search patterns of our potential customers. I hope the data you’ve since uncovered has blown your mind! But what if we could take search data one step further to reveal trends? Wouldn’t it be great if we could spot a new breakthrough niche, or product? Or how about being prepared for the decline of another? Well, as you might expect, Google was thinking the same thing. Enter Google Insights for Search.
From Google:
With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties.
From Me:
With Google Insights for search you can:
- Visualize where the search volume of a product is headed (up or down) over time
- Determine the location of your best potential customers
- Uncover breakthrough trends in your market
- Compare your brand awareness with that of your competitors
Pretty Awesome right? Let’s look at each.
Where Search Volume is Headed
Obviously, we want our products to be searched for more over time, and if you have a very well known brand, there might be enough data to show search volume for your exact product. But, for the rest of us, we’ll have to go a bit more broad and use our Product Zone Category as the starting point.
What I will do is first head on over to the Google Keyword Tool and drop in a few phrases to get Google’s juices flowing. For this example we’ll use the “Earth Friendly” Product Zone.
Running the tool showed that “Organic Baby Toys” was also a well sought out search, so I added that to my list.
Back in Google Insights, I’ll include each of these terms in to the input as so: earth friendly toys + eco friendly toys + green toys + organic toys organic baby toys. By including all of the terms together we get a good idea of how the market is searched (since different people search for the same thing in different ways, we can include them together). And since we are interested in potential customers, I’ll filter the results only to searches with shopping intent. The results look good:
If you look at the live chart (shown here), you’ll notice that google also provides a forecast for 2012. In it, google predicts that it will reach a new peak again in December. And although we have to consider this data at face value, it is a good sign that the eco industry is still on the up and up. In fact, if you click on “Growth Relative to the Shopping Category” you’ll see that this group of keywords is above the shopping average.
Determine the Location of your Best Potential Customers
If you scroll down just a bit, you’ll see the section titled “Regional Interest.” I love this data, because it is sometimes surprising where the bulk of searchers come from. If you click on “United States” it will filter by state, showing the most popular states for the search terms. If there is enough data, you can even drill down into cities, but with our example, there is not enough search data. This information is great for those of you who invest in paid search marketing like Adwords or Facebook Ads. Having this data by your side, you can determine which locations you want your ads to be shown in.
NOTE: It is important to spot potential problems with the data, as it is never perfect. The fact that Wisconsin is #1 makes me wonder if searches for “Green Bay Packers” is polluting the info that “green toys” is pulling in. You’ll need to do some more digging around to determine this, but keep a keen eye open for potential issues.
Uncover Breakthrough Trends in Your Market
By far my favorite aspect of Google Insights is it’s ability to provide you with potential breakthrough trends in the market. At the very bottom there is a table called “Search Items” with “top searches” and “rising searches” As you might have guessed, this is a list of keyword phrases that are starting to rise. But before we can get a good picture, we need to make a few changes to our original filter set. Originally we were using a data set that goes back to 2004. In order to see recent changes, we’ll need to play with the time frame. Again, the more search volume your keywords are receiving, the more granular we can narrow in on the date. I’ll start with data from the last 12 months, and I will make sure we have all categories set.
If you are following along, you’ll notice that there isn’t too much good info here. We see that the rising and top searches include “green lantern toys” and “green machine” which aren’t relevant, but we do see that “green baby toys” and “green toys truck” made the list. In a situation like this, I might add these phrases to Google Alerts and have it notify me daily with a list of websites that are currently talking about those products. The point here is to catch wind of a new product that is starting to gain popular interest, or an older product that has been given a fresh breath of life. You can also run these phrases back into the Google Keyword Research Tool every now and again to see if their average monthly search volume starts to significantly rise.
Match Your Brand Awareness with Your Competitors
The last trick I wanted to show you was how you can compare your online brand awareness (as it is determined through search) compared to your competitors. This is a great tactic to help set milestones for new businesses, but also for established businesses to keep an eye on rising competitors. Now, to be fair we will use a non toy-industry example. The Internet Television buzz is currently dominated by Netflix, but I am interested in where the smaller players match up. So lets check that out.
From the same input we used to insert our first keywords, I entered the following:
And here is what the data returned:
Interestingly, this holiday season hulu plus passed Crackle by the biggest margin for the first time. I wonder if they saw it coming? Also interesting is that HBOGo was close in the races this past summer, but has since started to decline.
Ok it’s your turn, have a go with Google Insights, and feel free to ask specific questions in the comments below.
