Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Google Trends and Google Insights for Keyword and Website Research

There is definitely no shortage of cool tools designed to make Internet Marketing easier, and our friends at Google AdWords certainly have their own fair share of these tools available for your use. Two of these tools that I find myself using more and more are Google Trends and Google Insights for Search.

Google Trends has the ability to show you historical search data for keywords, as well as the popularity for these terms across geographic regions, cities, and languages. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it provides a nice way to see seasonality and other trending factors for your search terms.

Google Trends for Websites, announced last week, not only provides traffic data for popular websites, it also compares and ranks site visitation across different regions, and related websites and searches. I have found this tool useful for evaluating potential websites for placement targeting, as well as finding other optional websites and search terms related to the websites users. Unfortunately, less popular websites with low traffic volume and those that have chosen to not be indexed by Google through the use of the robots.txt exclusion file, simply do not provide enough data to make this tool very useful and will result in the message: “Your websites – do not have data to display”.

Google Insights for Search provides a little more flexibility and functionality than Trends, along with some interesting additional features. For example, Google Insights for Search not only provides volume patterns over time, it also provides top related and rising searches. You can compare this data by different locations, time ranges, and search terms. You can even see a map of your selected regions with hot spots showing search activity in those areas. I prefer to use this tool over Google Trends for search, since it provides much more detailed information.

For example, I have a client who does “basement waterproofing.” By doing a quick search in trends, I was able to see that historically during the 4th quarter search volume for this phrase drops dramatically. Since I can see the trend going back as far as 4 years, it is safe to say that he will experience the same drop in traffic during this time period.

On the same note, I was able to determine that this particular search phrase generates a substantial increase in search volume during the 2nd quarter of each year. With this in mind, we can anticipate this spike in traffic and consider its effect when developing pay-per-click (PPC) advertising strategies.

Since my client’s Google AdWords campaign is regionally targeted, I used Google Insights to compared the trending on “basement Waterproofing” in his location to the rest of the United States. Also, by selecting his region in the drop down, I was then able to see hot spots indicating higher search volumes on the local map.

Google Trends and Google Insights for Search are just two of the many tools that JumpFly PPC Account Managers use to help optimize ROI. A well thought out keyword strategy is just one of the many skills a qualified PPC account manager brings to the table. Contact a professional PPC Management Company today about how these tools can be used to benefit your next campaign.

The Chinese General Sun Tzu wrote “Know your enemy and know yourself..”.

Every once in a while I receive an email or phone call regarding websites like KeywordSpy, KeyCompete, & SpyFu, that allegedly provide your competitor’s keywords list, bids, traffic volume, daily spend, and ROI. As you can imagine, I receive these contacts from clients who are appalled that their account information might be available to their competitors, as well as website owners who are thinking of using this information in their own Adwords accounts.

It’s important to know that Google does not allow any 3rd parties to have access into any Google AdWords accounts. These “keyword spy” services do not have the ability to look into you or your competitors AdWords accounts and deliver the actual data. Instead, they most likely use an automated system that continuously searches on a massive list of common keywords and scrapes the results provided. Google now provides volume and CPC estimates, and these website’s can correlate that data with the scraped results.

Considering the inaccuracies that I have found with the Google Keyword Tool’s traffic and CPC estimates, as well as the ability to see incorrect ad positioning from repetitive searches unless the Google AdPreview Tool is used, I was very skeptical when it came to the accuracy of this competitor data.

Fortunately, JumpFly manages hundreds of Google AdWords accounts for clients of all sizes and I was able to check the results from these services to actual data.

Unfortunately, the results were not surprising. I found huge amounts of incorrect data. Everything from the amount of keywords found, the position of keywords, to the price per click, were often completely incorrect. The price per click, clicks per day, and daily spend estimates were so far off in most cases that I was actually amazed. The ROI estimates were a joke. Trying to see data on any account that is regionally targeted is worthless.

To be fair, the versions of ad copy used were very accurate. Some of the competitors listed were also correct. Often, a small portion of the most general and obvious keywords were correct, although their position, spend, and cost per click were almost always incorrect.

Of course, novices at keyword research might find “keyword spy” tools somewhat useful to at least point them in the right direction. Certainly, it could just as easily point them in the wrong direction as well without experience. Especially if they take the budgeting and bidding data into consideration when making decisions and estimates. They might even provide keyword ideas that a novice might not normally think of, possibly even some good negative keywords. No doubt, it would be a fast process to simply download this competitor data and upload it to your AdWords account. Personally, I highly recommend not using this approach.

The bottom line here is that none of the information provided by these “keyword spy” services could ever replace proper keyword research. Even if the information they provided was accurate, you’ll never know if that keyword was actually working for your competitor, and there is no guarantee that your account would perform the same. In fact, it’s safe to say that you would not receive the same performance, since I have yet to see two accounts perform exactly the same, even on the same keywords.

There are always people looking for the “magic pill” that will side step all of the usual processes and miraculously put them on the fast track to success. Marketing tools like KeywordSpy, KeyCompete, and SpyFu definitely appeal to these people, however many legitimate hard working e-business owners would also enjoy the ability to “know” their competitors AdWords account data. Unfortunately, these tools will not help.

My advice is to have an experienced PPC Management team perform the keyword research and monitor the progress of your campaigns. Base your strategy on actual data and actual results. Let your competitors subscribe to these “magic pill” services, and you can watch them run around in circles chasing shadows and wasting money.

Rest assured your Google AdWords accounts are not getting hacked.  For more information, meet Google’s Click Quaility Team.