Google Insights sure is neat, but is it enough?

Posted by: Jacob Wolfsheimer, Search Engine Marketing Manager Aug 19, 2008 0 Comments

Keyword research is immensely helpful to starting any marketing campaign, whether it’s online or off. While some products and services are virtually self-explanatory, others require consideration when it comes to developing the marketing copy. You might think there’s no difference between a “wedding registry” and a “wedding gift wish list,” but in online searches, one is used more frequently than the other. Searching for “wedding registry” could give you completely different results than searching for “wedding gift wish list.” With appropriate keyword research, a good keyword research report will be the result of manual cross-referencing of popularity and competitiveness, and include geographic data for locally targeted businesses.

Take the following example: Pergo is the name of a Swedish flooring company. They are the best selling brand manufacturer of laminate flooring. A commercial real estate company is building a new apartment complex and is looking for flooring materials. A national flooring company that targets commercial real estate companies wants to be the source of the flooring materials. For the flooring company, it’s important to use language in its marketing materials—including online press releases and local search engine marketing efforts—that’s relevant to the type of flooring appropriate for a commercial real estate company.

Using both free and paid keyword research tools may tell you that “bamboo wood flooring” is more popular than “laminate hardwood floor,” but the competition for organic and paid listings is different. The former has higher advertiser competition, but lower organic competition. Add to the mix that the flooring company wants to reach the real estate company when the real estate company is ready to buy—not too early in their research. Should their materials mention Pergo, laminate flooring, or both? Should the online marketing materials also include action-oriented language such as “buy” or “install?”

Google Insights, a new Google tool release building off of the popular Google Trends tool, wants to help. Google Insights is the little brother of Google Trends, which shows keywords in comparison with each other. The result is a graph of the overall search volume, but the real data is in the regional and language data below the graph. And if you’re looking for recent trends, the data can be sorted based on a date range as small as the last 30 days.

Google Trends indicates that “laminate flooring” is a more popular search phrase than “Pergo,” but only in the United States and UK. Virtually anywhere else, and in almost any other language, “Pergo” is more popular. That certainly aids your strategic marketing messages, but does not help you find other high-value search phrases or discover search trends.

The benefit of Google Insights over Google Trends as a basic tool is that it will also show you other top searches and rising searches. The top searches are consistent with your inputs, and include a relevance score that’s a measure of search terms used before and after people submit the same inputs as you. The rising searches section is a highlight of search phrases that have received a significant increase in the number of searches based on the selected time period, in the selected geographic area. And with Google Insights, you can decide not to input a keyword at all, finding top searches and rising searches in more than 25 categories instead.

In the Pergo example, “bamboo wood flooring” is the more popular search phrase, but the question remains: should we include action-oriented language such as “buy” or “install?” The answer is most likely “yes,” but with Google Insights, you can discover that in the last 12 months in the United States, “install hardwood floor” and “hardwood floor installation” are breakout search phrases, indicating a significant increase in the number of searches on those phrases, making them prime targets for a flooring company’s marketing materials, though neither phrase mentions laminate or bamboo.

Insights like this can help inform marketing strategy, but you can’t inform marketing through one tool alone, just as you wouldn’t market through just one channel or using just one form of media. Businesses should be taking note of online search trends through more than just Google Insights. To stay relevant and timely, you have to invest energy into research and development. With Google Insights, beginning your marketing copy and direction is made easier, but keep in mind that Google Insights is a neat tool for beginning your marketing campaign; it will never rival the benefits of a paid keyword research tool or service that takes you from start to successful finish.

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Jacob Wolfsheimer

Search Engine Marketing Manager

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