Google Insights

I don’t follow the search and SEO news like I did a few years ago but even I spotted a lot of the guys talking about a new service from Google called Google Insights.

The service provides information on search volume broken down by time and geography. So if you want to know if your favorite search terms are gaining or losing popularity, and where, then this is the tool for you.

Unlike Barry I can’t get very excited about sports so I first tried a search close to my own heart … “Chris Garrett”

Google Insights for Search - Search Volume: "chris garrett" - Worldwide, 2004 - present

As Aaron says “you can consider boosting early success in the most receptive markets”. Using this I can kind-of see where interest would most likely be.

Aaron also points out this is valuable data to PR and branding folks:

This type of tool can also be used to see how related some generic concepts are to more specific related concepts, and how much news coverage and marketplace changes move the relative importance of different keywords in a marketplace. Public relations experts will be able to use graphs like the following to say “hey our brand is catching up with the market leader.”

Seeing how a term is growing or diminishing in popular usage is an important feature. Compare “weblog” to “blog”:

“Weblog”
Google Insights for Search - Search Volume: weblog - Worldwide, 2004 - present

“Blog”
Google Insights for Search - Search Volume: blog - Worldwide, 2004 - present

As you can see, while the terms were interchangeable at one time, “weblog” almost seems old fashioned now.

Where it falls down though is the data is based on what people enter as search terms, not what they are interested in. This is an important distinction as this chart shows:

“Microsoft v Google v Yahoo!”
Google Insights for Search - Search Volume: google vs. microsoft vs. yahoo - Worldwide, 2004 - present

What do I mean? Well, I know there are many people who enter Yahoo as a search term in their Google homepage to take them to Yahoo! website. They are not interested in Yahoo! as a search, they use it for navigation. Without that nugget of info you might draw the wrong conclusion from the lines on that graph. Take the data as interesting but hardly 100% reliable.

That said, it is still useful and fun. In particular, the geographic info is interesting, who knew where the most interest in SEO was?

“SEO”
Google Insights for Search - Search Volume: seo - Worldwide, 2004 - present

What do you think? A toy or genuinely useful?

Posted on August 14, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Google

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