Internet giant Google has broadened the type of research advertisers and consumers in general can perform  on how people use its leading search engine, with a new tool called Google Insights for Search that has expanded on data analysis features introduced over the past two months in its Trends and AdWords services, the Mountain View, California-based company announced Tuesday. Comparisons Possible Over Time And Region Although the tool was created with advertisers and marketers in mind, Insights for Search has allowed anyone with a Google account to research and compare search terms from the world's most used search engine site, and to see how they stack up over time, in various geographic regions, and in specific categories. A search for the term "apple," for example, could be viewed in either a wide scope containing all categories, or in a more specific advertising vertical market. "Google Insights for Search allows you to filter this query by the Food & Drink category, resulting in a dramatically different view of search volume trends and related searches of apple, the fruit," said Google product manager Elan Dekel and Google instructor Niv Efron writing in a message posted Tuesday on the company's AdWords blog announcing the new tool. In July Google began sharing popularity information for the keywords users of its search engine look for, in an addition to its popular AdWords online ad management program. That search volume data included the approximate number of times keywords were entered using the Google search engine or on the company's network of partner Web sites. Search Terms Can Be Shown On World Heat Maps Insights for Search expands on that offering, and on Google's June update to its Google Trends search query analysis tool, which for the first time allowed people to see the popularity of Web sites and some information on how people may be finding them through its search engine. "In June, we updated Google Trends with numbers and the ability to download results to a spreadsheet," said  Google Inside AdWords engineer Trevor Claiborne writing in the Tuesday blog post. "We received a lot of great feedback from agencies and advertisers on how they're using the new version; from identifying new growth markets to optimizing their Google AdWords campaigns," Claiborne added. The ability of users to download data to a spreadsheet for analysis or comparison to their own information is available only to Google customers who sign in to their account. Insights for Search has added "some cool new features," such as the ability to view the relative search volume and regional interest in particular keywords on a "world heat map," which shows variations in color depending on how much activity search terms have had on the Google search engine, Dekel and Efron noted. Tool Could Aid Researchers And Marketers In Many Fields The new tool adds to the arsenal of utilities Google has given advertisers over the past two months, that can be put to use in the rapidly-growing online advertising market, which is expected to see spending climb towards the $50 billion mark during 2008, a 22 percent increase from last year according to research company eMarketer. A SearchEngineWorld example screenshot of Insights for Search is shown below.  The large majority of Google's 2007 $16.6 billion advertising sales revenue came from the sale of small text-based ads shown alongside search results and on its ad network, managed by advertisers who bid for keywords through its AdWords program, which is now expected to give marketers a clearer picture when creating advertising campaigns using Insights for Search. The new tool is an extension of Google Trends, which began in 2006 as a rudimentary way for users to learn what searchers the world over were seeking using Google. A list similar to one available in Google's Hot Trends utility, which shows the 100 fastest-rising search queries conducted in the United States daily, is present in Insights for Search, showing search terms whose search volume and popularity are on the rise. A list of related search terms is also shown. Some analysts saw the move opening up more of Google's vast search engine database as an opportunity for researchers in many fields, such as economics, medicine, sociology, and finance. Google Broadens AdWords Keyword Research With Insights For Search Tool To some industry observers, writing on WebmasterWorld, one of the Web's most popular online discussion forums for mostly tech-savvy webmasters and search engine marketing (SEM) professionals, the  announcement of Google Insights for Search presented both new opportunity and potential shortcomings. "I found it particularly interesting to see the different trends in different countries for generic search terms such as 'holiday' or 'housing issues'," wrote a WebmasterWorld member using the handle "le_gber." Another WebmasterWorld member observed search term volume figures in Insights for Search that differed from those available in a keyword tool available in Google's AdWords management utility. "The popularity rankings don't match up with the Google AdWords keyword tool all that well," wrote the member, who used the handle "Kufu." "Now it's time to figure out which one is closer to reality," the member added. Differences between the two separate tools could be due to how Google "normalizes" search data. The Web site for Google's new tool notes that "just because two regions show the same percentage for a particular search term doesn't mean that their absolute search volumes are the same. Data from these two regions - with significant differences in search volumes - can be compared equally because the data has been normalized by the total traffic from each respective region." Related Links:
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9:01 pm on Aug. 6, 2008 (utc 0)