Google Insights for Search : Marketing statistics for all

August 7th, 2008

I have been playing around recently with Google Insights for Search, a brand new search data analysis tool for search marketing specialists.

Just like Google Trends, this new Google search marketing tool offers seasonal and historical trends with search volume shown distributed across regions and cities. Google Insights for Search however goes even further by allowing you to narrow search data to specific categories, location subregions and even user specified date ranges.

Once your search parameters are defined Google Insights for Search not only presents you with historical trend data and regional interest statistics but, in a similar manner to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool, also offers you the top search terms related to your query and a list of the hottest related rising searches.

As wonderful as this search marketing tool is, I do however have to question the validity of the representation of the data. For example: A search for the term ‘Gifts’ with the filters of United Kingdom / All Subregions / Last 12 Months / All Categories produces the following demographics.

Compare this to the same search on Google Trends and the data starts to get a little confusing.

As you can see from the Google Insights for Search results it appears that the Isle of Man may be a market worth exploring for our particular term. For those who are not familiar with the Isle of Man - it is an island nestled between England and Ireland with a population of around 75,000 people. Approx 1/100th of the population of London.

But wait a minute? Google Trends is highlighting Scotland as a popular search market for our term! Both tools, by default use the broad matched version of a keyword so where does the difference in statistics lie?

All-in-all a wonderful search marketing tool, which is still in Beta, so possibly the results may be distorted at this time.

Entry Filed under: SEO Industry, Search Engines, Search Marketing