Getting Insight From Google Insights

Whenever Google launches a new tool or service there’s much chatter and blogging. What I’ve found though is that many bloggers just give you the news and don’t really discuss the implications.

One interesting tool that was launched earlier this month was Google Insights For Search.

You can type in a search phrase or a number of phrases and then see the trends of usage of this term over time.

Some fun examples; You can see how the phrase ’Beijing Olympics’ has massively ramped up in August (well, no surprise there then). Or how about the decline in interest for ’Tony Blair’ over the last year?

I think there are more interesting applications for an e-commerce business to consider.

Here’s 3 suggestions to get you started.

1. Competitor Analysis

There’s usually a positive relationship between a company’s brand recognition and the number of searches it gets on it’s own “brand” terms. You can use this to your advantage by comparing the volume of searches your own company brand is getting compared to your competitors.

For example, compare the following 4 flight/rail companies for UK searches over the last 4 years: British Airways, Eurostar, Ryanair and Easyjet. You can see the search spike relating to the launch of the new Eurostar terminal in November 2007, but much more obvious is the share of interest that BA has lost to Easyjet and Ryanair over the years.

2. Regional Demand

If you are entering a new market it’s useful to see where in that country your potential customer base exists. In which cities will you find your new customers?

For example, in the online restaurant reservations business, if you were to search for ‘restaurants’ by French region you’d see (as expected) that Paris is a top location. Which city would you have guessed as next most important? Of the other major cities it’s not Bordeaux, Nantes or Lyon where there are most diners online, it’s Toulouse and Nice. If you cross reference this data with population data, you get a good market research tool.

3. Seasonal Trends

Many businesses are seasonal in nature. If you a a growing business (and I hope you are), determining what parts of your monthly figures can be attributed to growth and what are caused by an underlying seasonal trend is difficult to gauge. Say we did well in August. Is that because more people are in the market for our product generally in August (compared to July) - or did we actually take a bigger share of the market?

For example, if you are a retailer selling gifts, what sort of trend do you see for gifts? A little spike in February (Valentine's Day), a big spike in November (Christmas). No surprises there then. If you are unsure of your seasonal demand trends, this is quite a quick and easy way to take the pulse of your consumer base.


So - there you are, a couple of different ways to use this great new tool. I'm sure there are many more. Please feel free to leave a comment if you've gained insights in other ways.