Rocky Fu’s Blog

Back from Tioman holiday for a while; just got some time to put together a post below to get you started using Google Insights for Search.

Google Insights for Search

Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you’ve entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results, indicating interest over time, plotted on a scale from 0 to 100; the totals are indicated next to bars by the search terms.

Google recently launched this new tool called “insights for search” (overview here), which is similar to Google Trends. Let’s take a look at how this tool can help your business with some examples.

1. Brand Awareness. Take five P&G brands for example:
   Simply separate different terms (brands) by commas, and you can apply any of three filters:
   
   you can see the trends throughout different period and different regions as in Google Trends.
2. Competitor Analysis. Compare your product or brand related terms with that of your competitors and identify the trends to find out who is driving wider awareness in which market.
3. Popular Products Trends. For companies having launched many products under each brand like Apple iPod, it’s always good to checkout the most popular ones and the trends.
   
4. Industry Search Trends. By simply selecting the region, date range, and industry category, you’ll be able to see the related searches to the industry you’re in. Here is an example of telecommunications industry:
   
   
   
5. Seasonality comparison. For example, the graph below shows the search trend for “great singapore sales” (GSS) during mid-year GSS period (June, July) in Singapore:
   
   Or, what you can do is to pick the whole year and compare the trends of one or a few generic keywords to identify the seasonality trends.
6. Geographic distribution. Know where to find your customers who’re interested in your products. See how search volume is distributed across regions and cities.
7. Campaign duration. When should you start a campaign and when should you end it? Use Google Search Insights to get some ideas. e.g. if you sell Christmas gifts, you want to know when you should start paid search campaigns and when is your “last opportunity” to promote; this chart shows you some ideas:
   

This post just gives you some ideas how to make use of Google Insights for Search for your business. Don’t bury your eyes with those numbers; instead, focus on the trends.

Related Posts:

• Facebook Lexicon V.S. Google Trends
• Watch Asia Job Trends to Identify Competition
• 10 Excellent Online Tools to Identify Trends
• Who Are Bidding On Your Brand In Google?
• Google Trends for Competitor Research