For some people, especially those involved in online advertising and search engine optimization, information and analytics about how Google handles specific search terms is like a drug–they just can’t get enough of it. And for these people, Google is the ultimate pusher of this information.
So it’s no surprise that Google likes to keep the product flowing. From Google Trends to Google AdPlanner, they always have something to keep these customers coming back.
And the latest bit of something that Google has released for these users is Google Insights for Search. Like most releases from Google, Insights for Search is a beta product that provides detailed information about specific search terms and how they are trending regionally, in certain categories and over time.
Anyone who has used Google Trends will see a lot of similarity between the two services. Like Trends, Google Insights for Search shows related search terms and also rising search terms.
Some of the nice features include the ability to compare multiple search terms with useful graphs to show the strength of the terms over time and in different countries or states. This, along with all of the additional trending information, offers some insight into how specific search terms or campaigns are performing and lets users dig deeper in multiple ways.
Users need to learn how to read the data, as some of the results may look misleading on their face. For example, since the data is normalized over region and not based on pure volume, it may appear that certain areas have more interest in a search term than in countries with a greater number of Internet users.
Like all of these Google analysis services, Google Insights for Search is a useful tool for those looking to improve search performance on Google, but it isn’t an end-all-be-all tool for search optimization.
To try out Google Insights for Search go to http://www.google.com/insights/search/#.
