Google Introduces Four New Products - Google Trends
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The new product that’s most likely to cause a major stir among SEOs and advertisers, though, is Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends). One observer described it as rather like being given the keys to Google Zeitgeist. Mayer explained that “For the first time ever, Google is making it possible to sift through billions of search queries from around the world to see what people are thinking about.”
So what exactly does it do? A user can type in a search term, or several search terms separated by commas. Hit “enter,” and you get a page with several charts. The top chart shows how many searches were conducted for that particular term, and how frequently it was mentioned in the news, over a period of time. Drop-down menus let you adjust both the time period and the region of the world focused on, while if you use multiple terms they show up in different colors. Several clickable news items are highlighted to the right; letter-coded flags on the chart indicate when they were published, so you can match up certain spikes.
That’s not all. Below the chart I just described is another one, with tabs for cities, regions, and languages. This is a bar graph that allows you to compare how frequently terms are searched for. So if you’re comparing “boxers” vs. “briefs” for example, and you’re looking at cities, you can see that boxers are a lot more popular in Tampa, but not nearly so much more popular in Austin. Clicking on the “Regions” tab compares the searches in various countries. The languages tab took a good bit longer to load, sad to say.
And one “bug” turned up – well, I guess that’s why it’s a beta. A search on boxers vs. briefs, one would think, would be focused on underwear. But, judging from the news stories turned up during this search, legal briefs were also drawn into the mix, as well as other kinds of briefs (news briefs, sports briefs, and so on). Even with that limitation, it should be very easy to see how any SEO or advertiser could make excellent use of this information. In particular, if you want to shift your advertising campaign to an area of the world where you have little knowledge or presence, this can give you some clues as to what kind of reception you will receive – and where you need to apply your efforts.
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