Google Insights for Search

SEM keyword research tools that I mentioned previously allow you to research new keyword ideas for your Adwords campaigns targeting Google and Google’s Search Network. Google Insights for Search is a keyword research tool and also allows you to spot industry trends. Google recently improved Insights for Search by allowing you to filter data by:

  • News Search, Image Search or Product Search as opposed to only Web Search
  • Categories
  • Metros for the United States

Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of Google web searches 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. This analysis indicates the likelihood of a random user to search for a particular search term from a certain location at a certain time. Keep in mind that Insights designates a certain threshold of traffic for search terms, so that those with low volume won’t appear.

To illustrate how you can use Insights for Search, let us look at how Walmart did between November and December in the past couple of years. From the graph below, you can see how Walmart’s growth in the past several years as well as when exactly the traffic peaks occurred.

    Interest Over Time

Insights for Search gives you news that were related to Walmart during the period of your choice.

    News Headlines

Insights for Search’s Top Searches and Rising Searches are new keyword ideas and also show you:

  • Walmart’s major competitors such as Target, Best Buy, Kmart, Sears, and Circuit City
  • Walmart’s mostly searched item on Google is Wii
  • Google users look for toys on Walmart
  • For Black Friday shopping, Google users shop on Walmart
    Top Searches

The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100; each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.

Rising searches highlight searches that have experienced significant growth in a given time period, with respect to the preceding time period. So if you’re comparing data for a search term during 2006, the time period serving as the basis of comparison is 2005. Similarly, if you’re comparing searches for that term during May of 2006, the basis of comparison is April of 2006.

You can compare up to five search terms or groupings at one time, with up to 25 search terms in each grouping (use the plus sign to create a grouping). Click + Add search term to add a search term or a grouping; to remove a search term, click the x next to it.

Here’s an example:

pen + pencil + paper (grouping 1)
stapler + tape + notebook + ruler (grouping 2)
eraser + paper clip (grouping 3)

    Compare Search Terms Groupings

By looking at data from Regional Interest, you can prioritize your focus on your regional geo-targeted Adwords campaigns.

    Regional Interest

Google Insights for Search also associates Walmart to the categories below:

  • Shopping
  • Local
  • Computers & Electronics
  • Games
  • Lifestyles
  • Entertainment
    Categories

This tells you the categories and products you should focus on.

Signing into your Google account allows you to download the data to spreadsheets (CSV files) and makes numerical values of graphs, rising searches, and top searches available to you. Also, only after you download the data to CSV files, you will be able to see more than the top 10 searches and rising searches.

Here are other examples on how you can use Google Insights for Search.

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